CAT/C/58/D/595/2014 Complainant’s comments on the State party’s observations 5.1 On 13 August 2015, the complainant disputed the State party’s submission that his allegations were inadmissible and without merit and maintained that his peculiar circumstances rendered him susceptible to torture, forced recruitment by paramilitary organizations and prolonged periods of detention. He referred to the findings of the European Court of Human Rights in NA. v. the United Kingdom2 and maintained that in his case too there was a clear danger of being strip-searched in the airport upon arrival in Sri Lanka and an adverse inference to be drawn in the event that scars were to be found. He also referred to the cases of two returnees from Australia to Sri Lanka who had been interrogated and tortured upon their return.3 5.2 The complainant submitted that in his request for ministerial intervention he had drawn attention to the contradictory positions taken — to his detriment — by the Refugee Review Tribunal, but the Minister had failed to consider the importance of the material placed before him. He had cited a Refugee Review Tribunal decision4 that considered scarring resembling battle wounds among Tamils in Sri Lanka to trigger a peculiar profile susceptible to harm both from the authorities and from paramilitary organizations, and pointed out that in his case the Tribunal had considered the same kind of evidence but had decided that scarring did not give rise to suspicion of membership in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or of combat experience. The Minister had not addressed the material injustice committed against the complainant. 5.3 The complainant noted that the findings of the Refugee Review Tribunal pertaining to complementary protection were restricted to one paragraph in which it was stated that the Tribunal was not satisfied that he was a person of interest to the Sri Lankan authorities and he therefore did not meet the complementary protection criterion. He submitted that the presence of scars from an artillery attack had been admitted by the Tribunal, but the Tribunal had ignored “the inferences that are drawn by the authorities” and had failed to consider whether there was a “real chance” that he would be subject to serious harm. The complainant also argued that the non-refoulement protection in the State party had not been adequate in his case. The complainant provided an overview of recent amendments in the domestic legislation which, he argued, diminished protection for asylum seekers and went against the non-refoulement principle. 5.4 The complainant also referred to the concluding observations of the Committee5 with regard to Sri Lanka and noted that many of its recommendations concerning preventing and investigating instances of torture remained unimplemented and that a culture of impunity continued to exist in Sri Lanka. State party’s additional observations on admissibility and the merits 6.1 On 23 December 2015, the State party noted that in his submission the complainant had claimed that scarring resembling battle wounds among Tamils in Sri Lanka triggered a profile susceptible to harm both from the authorities and from paramilitary groups. The State party submitted in that regard that the Refugee Review Tribunal had not accepted that the complainant had been targeted in October 2011, nor that he had been abducted by a paramilitary group in March 2012 due to his scar or for any other reason. The Federal Circuit Court concluded that the Tribunal’s findings that the alleged events had not 2 3 4 5 Application No. 25904/07, para. 147. The complainant submitted a two-page report by the Edmund Rice Centre, dated 5 May 2015, describing the above-mentioned cases, which is available on file. See decision 1213580 [2012] RRTA 1161 (12 December 2012), paras. 98-100. See CAT/C/LKA/CO/3-4. 5