CAT/C/60/D/648/2015 Criminal Investigation Department officers, who warned them to inform the Department immediately if they became aware of the complainant’s whereabouts. 2.7 The complainant applied to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection10 for a protection visa. His application was rejected by a delegate of the Minister on 17 August 2010. The delegate accepted the complainant’s claims with regard to the incidents in 2006 and July 2008, but found that he did not meet the definition of a refugee as set out in article 1A of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. 2.8 The complainant appealed the decision via the independent merits review procedure, but his appeal was rejected on 13 May 2011. The complainant asserts that the reason given for the refusal to reverse the decision of 17 August 2010 was because his claim to have been detained and tortured by the Criminal Investigation Department was found to lack credibility. The complainant states that at the time he was not able to provide proof of this fact. He applied for judicial review of the first independent merits review to the Federal Magistrates Court,11 which rejected his application on 2 November 2011. 2.9 He then appealed to the Federal Court of Australia, which found in his favour on 2 March 2012. As a result, his claims were reassessed in a second independent merits review. This time, he provided documentary evidence, in the form of a certified copy (in Sinhalese) of a report filed by the Criminal Investigation Department and the Terrorist Investigation Division with the Chief Magistrate’s Court of Colombo, showing that 39 suspects alleged to have assisted LTTE had been arrested, kept in detention by the Division and brought before the Chief Magistrate’s Court of Colombo under the Emergency Regulations. In the report, the complainant’s name is listed at No. 15, but he claims that it was misspelled in Sinhala. Therefore, the reviewer in the second independent merits review decided that the document did not relate to the complainant and rejected his application. The complainant contends that the misspelling of his name was likely a result of a total disregard by police for Tamils, or a typographical error. 2.10 The complainant later obtained from the Registrar of the Magistrate’s Court of Kalmunai 12 a document certifying that he had been charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist group and that his name was misspelled in the report. The complainant also obtained a letter from a Member of Parliament for the Batticaloa District, dated 27 August 2014, reiterating his claims. 2.11 The complainant applied to the Federal Circuit Court for judicial review of the second independent merits review on the basis of this new evidence. His application was rejected on 12 July 2013. His application to have the decision judicially reviewed was dismissed on 4 December. His application for special leave to appeal to the High Court was also rejected, on 15 August 2014. On 2 September, he applied for a waiver under section 48B of the Migration Act 1998 to allow him to lodge a new application for a protection visa. He also requested ministerial intervention, with a request to issue a favourable decision on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and exceptional circumstances. On 10 November, the complainant’s application was rejected. The complainant maintains that he has thus exhausted all available domestic remedies. 2.12 The complainant’s wife and daughter continue to live in Sri Lanka, in fear of harassment because the complainant is being sought by the authorities and pro-Government paramilitaries.13 10 11 12 13 Then the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Renamed the Federal Circuit Court in 2013. The Registrar was approached by the complainant’s wife and requested to provide this information. The complainant cites country reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Asylum Seekers from Sri Lanka issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2010 and 2012, confirming that the torture and ill-treatment of persons in custody have remained a problem since the armed conflict. 3