CAT/C/30/D/216/2002 page 4 time, he held a Jordanian passport valid until February 2000. His visa application was rejected on 3 December 1998, but he entered Sweden on 17 December 1999 with a forged Lithuanian passport. 4.2 During the complainant’s first interview with the Immigration Board, he stated that he had gone to Lithuania to contact Jewish connections with a view to selling the land. There, an “Arab mafia” had allegedly threatened his life because he wanted to sell land to Jews. Family members in Amman, Jordan, had done likewise. He also came to Sweden as he wanted to invest in Swedish business and make his living that way. 4.3 At subsequent interviews, he stated that in 1975 the Jordanian authorities refused for one year to renew his passport. After family intervention, it was renewed allegedly only on condition that he would not return. Thereafter, it was renewed every fifth year several times, until in Lithuania, the “Arab mafia” took his passport when he purchased a forged Lithuanian passport. In Sweden, he intended to contact Jews for the purpose of selling his land, and he could no longer obtain a Jordanian passport as his efforts to sell the land were known. He had never been politically active. 4.4 The Migration Board, in rejecting his applications for asylum and a residence permit, found inter alia that he had not invoked any reason apart from financial reasons to sell the land he had inherited. The fact that he was able to obtain extensions of his passport while allegedly being wanted by the Jordanian security service was contradictory. Moreover, he was found not guilty both times he was tried in the early 1970s. Accordingly, he had not substantiated that he risked persecution as a refugee, or was otherwise in need of protection. 4.5 The Aliens Appeals Board, in turn, found that the complainant had not justified any fear of being in an exposed position in his own country, and observed that his arrests by the PLO had taken place some 30 years previously. The claim that his land dealings implied great risks in Jordan was pure speculation. Moreover, it was relevant that he could prolong his Jordanian passport on several occasions without difficulty. He thus had not substantiated that Jordanian authorities or others in that country were interested in him on grounds such as political opinion. The Board referred to the Committee’s jurisprudence that the burden of proof was not high in alleged torture cases, complete evidence in clear support of such a claim being rare. The risk of torture upon return, while having to be more than a theoretical possibility or mere suspicion, did not have to be highly probable. Applying these standards, the Board found that there did not exist substantial grounds to believe he would in fact face torture in the event of a return to Jordan, or even a real risk thereof. In support of his subsequent application, the complainant supplied a declaration from his lawyer that the Jordanian authorities had refused to renew his passport and had instead referred him to the security service. 4.6 As to the admissibility of the case, the State party argues that the complaint is inadmissible under article 22, paragraph 2, of the Convention, for lacking the minimum substantiation required of an alleged breach of article 3. The State party refers, for this conclusion, to the Committee’s jurisprudence3 and its arguments on the merits, set out below. 4.7 As to the merits, the State party outlines the salient features of its asylum law, as applicable to the complainant. Under the asylum legislation, an alien is entitled to a residence permit (and a ban on removal) if he has a well-founded fear (i) of sentence of death or corporal