CCPR/C/115/D/2474/2014 “coaching” or “mentoring” of claimants is commonplace, testing of knowledge is of limited value. Rather, the interviewer needs to ask open questions and try to elicit the motivations for conversion and what effect the conversion has had on the claimant’s life.5 4.6 In evaluating the author’s credibility, the Court of Appeals considered that the three witnesses who testified in the author’s favour (the former senior priest at Oslo Cathedral, the reverend at the city church in Bodø and the bishop in Sør-Hålogaland) all regarded him as having a genuine Christian faith. The Court found that the author’s baptism and subsequent participation in Church activities were circumstances favoring the conclusion that “it is reasonably probable that his conversion to Christianity is genuine”. The Court also found that although the author demonstrated a lack of knowledge about some central aspects of Christianity at the Appeals Board hearing, he had “adequate basic knowledge about the Christian faith”. 4.7 However, the Court of Appeals also found that “formal baptism, participation in religious contexts and knowledge of Christianity are not in themselves capable of distinguishing between genuine converts and converts of convenience in a case like this”. The Court stated: In an ongoing dispute about the right to asylum, in which this issue is decisive in relation to the asylum seeker’s prospects of being granted a residence permit in Norway, it cannot be ruled out that these actions may be strategic actions aimed at obtaining a desired good. For the same reason, the Court of Appeals finds that it cannot give decisive weight to the testimony of people who have met [the author] in Christian contexts or assessed his faith in the way [one of the witnesses] has done. Such people will also find it difficult to distinguish between people with a genuine Christian faith and people who behave strategically in order to be granted asylum. 4.8 In its consideration of other relevant evidence, the Court of Appeals noted that only three months had elapsed from the time of the author’s initial contact with Christianity until he formally converted. The Court observed that that was not decisive in itself, as religious faith is an individual experience that can be both the result of a short or a longer process characterized by reflection and doubt, or a sudden, momentous event. However, in view of the fact that conversion is a very big step and has significant consequences for an Afghan, the Court found it remarkable that the conversion took place after such a short time. The author was also baptized without receiving any formal training. The pastor of the church stated that he had held only one brief conversation with the author before he was baptized. The author testified that he took part in church services and prayer meetings. The Court assumed that this was a positive experience for him, but noted that he understood little Norwegian at the time, so that his participation cannot have led to his acquiring any significant knowledge of the Christian faith as a basis for his own reflection. The author also testified in the Court that he had read the Bible several times before he was baptized. The Court referred to the fact that the author, who, according to the available information, had seven years of schooling, had access at the time in question only to fellow asylum seeker P’s Bible in Farsi, which is not his first language. The Court therefore regarded it as unlikely that the author had read the Bible “several times” in such a short space of time and that that testimony contributed to undermining his credibility. 4.9 The Court of Appeals further noted that the parties agreed that the author’s original asylum statement could not constitute a basis for asylum and that the author stated that he first came into contact with Christianity around the time that the Directorate of Immigration rejected his petition for reversal of the Immigration Appeal Board’s negative decision on his asylum application. His conversion therefore took place shortly after his petition had 5 8 Sections 34, 35.