CAT/C/63/DR/698/2015 Advance unedited version 4.20 The State party fully supports the reasons given by the FOM and the FAC for the lack of credibility of the complainants' claims. The complainants' assertions that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture if returned to the Russian Federation do not reflect the facts and are insufficiently substantiated. Before the Committee, the complainants essentially repeat their story, yet not making it more plausible. This also applies to the medical certificate produced by the first complainant before the Committee, which was issued in Switzerland after the end of the second asylum procedure. This document is not suitable for questioning the findings of the national authorities and in so far as it attests the first complainant’s psychological problems, yet does not prove the cause of such problems. 4.21 According to the State party, nothing indicates that there are serious grounds for fearing that the complainants would be specifically and personally exposed to the risk of torture upon return to the Russian Federation. Their allegations and the evidence adduced do not make it possible to consider that their removal would expose them to a real, concrete and personal risk of being tortured. Therefore, the State party submits that their removal would not constitute a violation of its international commitments under the Article 3 of the Convention. Complainant’s comments on the State party’s observations 5.1 On 17 May 2016, in response to the State party’s observations, the complainants commented that they have both relied on the risk to them as family members of an imprisoned Chechen rebel in their initial submission to the Committee. The second complainant, 19 years old at the time, would also fall within the focus of the Chechen military. It is very common for sons of Chechen rebel fighters to also join the cause, once they are old enough and this was the fear of the first complainant. As a result, both complainants would be targeted as suspicious family members of a Chechen rebel fighter and face a real, personal and present risk of torture upon return to the Russian Federation. 5.2 The personal, real and present risk of torture for the complainants results from the cumulative aspects of this case. The complainants argue that they fall within a risk category – that of family members of Chechen rebel fighters – that is exposed to a real, present and personal risk of torture upon removal to the Russian Federation. This is in addition to falling within the risk category of persons who have already come to the attention of the authorities and have already been tortured in the past. 5.3 The complainants address the issue of credibility regarding the rape suffered by the first complainant in the hands of the military commander Yusup as to 1) the contradictions surrounding the details of rape, 2) the lack of medical evidence, 3) the failure to report the rape to the authorities or a doctor and 4) the delay between the husband’s arrest and rape. 5.4 As to the alleged contradictions regarding the place of the first rape and the number of persons during the rape in the apartment, the complainant notes that, it is important to recognise that victims of rape face particular difficulties as a result of trauma, stigma and shame, in recounting the sexual abuse they have suffered. In its guidelines on gender-specific persecution UNHCR recognises that in relation to such accounts, it is crucial to create an atmosphere of trust for the victim to be able to recount the suffered experience of sexual abuse. In addition, female victims of sexual abuse face particular difficulties when faced with male interviewers or interpreters. Moreover, detailed questioning regarding the sexual abuse, if at all possible, seeing that it can be retraumatising for victims to have to recount the details of the rape. The UN CAT Committee has also recognised that complete accuracy can rarely be expected from victims of torture and that contradictions and inaccuracies in the account are not material and do not raise doubts about the general veracity of the claims.22 In one of the substantive interviews the person representing the legal advice centre (Hilfswerksvertretung) was male, which made it more difficult for the first complainant to recount the details of the various instances of rape. She does not recall which interview, yet remembers it was one of the first two substantive interviews in March and June 2013. 5.5 The complainant also maintains that the inconsistences that the State party relies on are clearly not of the sort that go to the core of her account of rape so as to render the entire 22 8 See Alan v. Switzerland (CAT/C/16/D/21/1995) and V.L. v. Switzerland (CAT/C/37/D/262/2005).