CAT/C/56/D/594/2014
4.10 The State party further argues that the Committee is not an appellate, quasi-judicial
or administrative body and that considerable weight should be given to findings of facts
that are made by organs of the State party concerned.17 By referring to the Committee’s
jurisprudence, it submits that it is for the courts of the States parties to the Convention, and
not for the Committee, to evaluate the facts and evidence in a particular case, unless it can
be ascertained that the manner in which such facts and evidence were evaluated was clearly
arbitrary or amounted to a denial of justice.18 The State party contends that such allegations
of arbitrariness or denial of justice do not apply to the outcome of the domestic proceedings
in the present case. Accordingly, the State party considers that great weight must be
attached to the opinions of the national migration authorities, as expressed in their decisions
ordering the expulsion of the complainant to Algeria. The State party concludes that the
return of the complainant to Algeria would not amount to a violation of article 3 of the
Convention.
4.11 The State party considers, like the migration authorities, that there are several
reasons to question the veracity of the complainant’s claim that he would risk being
subjected to torture in violation of article 3 of the Convention upon his return to Algeria.
The State party agrees with the assessment made by the Migration Board and the Migration
Court that the complainant’s account contains contradictory information and that the
authenticity of the documents submitted can be called into question. The State party
considers that the complainant has failed to provide a credible account of his claims.
4.12 In that connection, the State party agrees with the assessment made by the Migration
Board and the Migration Court that the complainant has not plausibly established his
identity by means of the documents submitted. In support of his grounds for asylum, he
submitted, inter alia, copies of summonses from the Algerian police authorities and a copy
of a judgement, in order to substantiate his claim that he had been sentenced to 10 years’
imprisonment with hard labour. In its observations on the applicant’s previous case before
the Committee, the State party shared the assessments by the Migration Board and the
Migration Court that the documents submitted did not substantiate the complainant’s
claims. As in its previous observations, the State party also reiterates that the documents
submitted are of very limited probative value since they are copies of very simple
documents, which are easy to produce. In the first place, the State party notes that the
summonses require the complainant to report to the police for “a matter concerning [him]”,
but they do not refer to any suspicion of involvement in criminal activities. Further, as
assessed by the Migration Board and the Migration Court, the State party considers that the
authenticity of the alleged judgement is open to serious question. In that regard, the State
party recalls that the authenticity of the alleged judgement has been investigated by a
lawyer engaged by the Embassy of Sweden in Algiers, whose report, dated 25 July 2011,
was appended to the previous observations of the State party before the Committee. The
State party refers to some of the statements made in the report, including that “close
examination of the judgement demonstrates very clearly that it is a gross forgery, as
judgements in criminal matters are not drawn up in this manner at all, as many expressions
are missing and those that are used are quite inconsistent with the usual phraseology in a
criminal matter…, and in general, forced labour is never specified, only imprisonment.”
The lawyer also added that, for the sake of greater certainty, two visits were made to the
court of Boumerdès and the Criminal Court. After thorough investigations, the lawyer was
able to establish that there was no judgement against a person with the complainant’s name
17
18
8
See, for example, communication No. 277/2005, N.Z.S. v. Sweden, decision adopted on 22 November
2006, para. 8.6.
See, for example, communication No. 219/2002, G.K. v. Switzerland, decision adopted on 7 May
2003, para. 6.12.