CAT/C/39/D/304/2006
Page 4
2.5 The judge also had doubts about the correct age of the complainant’s companion and
did not accept her explanation that the Mexican police had misread the details on his voting
card. The judge is also said to have noted that, according to the complainant, B. was running
for the office of Governor of Mexico State, whereas, she says, she has always stated that he
was running for the office of Governor of Netzhuacoyotl.2 Thus the Refugee Protection
Division had again evaluated the evidence in an arbitrary fashion.
2.6 The complainants provide a copy of their request to the Federal Court for judicial
review of the Refugee Protection Division denial of their application. They consider the
request to be very brief, that it fails to mention the translation error, and that neither their
lawyer at the time nor the judge had taken sufficient time to examine their application.
2.7 The complainants argue that these errors - lack of thorough consideration, mistakes in
translation, etc. - were disastrous for them, yet they cannot be blamed for the errors, which
were made by others. Furthermore, the B. family is a powerful one and has connections with
powerful and corrupt politicians in Mexico. The complainants’ lives would thus be in danger
there.
The complaint
3.
The complainants assert that their forcible return to Mexico would constitute a violation
by Canada of their rights under article 3 of the Convention.
State party’s observations
4.1 The State party submitted its observations on 17 April 2007. It recalls that the
Committee has consistently held that it is not for the Committee to examine the evaluation of
the facts and evidence at the national level unless that evaluation was clearly arbitrary or
amounted to a denial of justice, or the decision makers had acted in a partial manner, which
was not the case here. The State party notes that the communication addresses exactly the
same facts as those considered by the Canadian authorities that had concluded that the
complainants were not credible.
4.2 The State party provides a detailed description of Canada’s asylum procedures. The
complainants arrived in Canada on 26 November 2003 as visitors. On 22 December 2003 the
complainant informed Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) that she wished to request
asylum on behalf of the two of them. On 9 January 2004 her application was sent to the
2
In this regard, the complainant’s counsel states that the complainant’s level of education
(five years of primary school) prevented her from understanding that a place like
Netzhuacoyotl could not have a governor. Counsel provides a newspaper cutting dated 24
December 2002 which states that B. had been nominated as candidate in local elections due
to take place in March 2003.