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CAT/C/34/D/195/2002
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to the Status of Refugees provides. The complainant had subsequently refrained from submitting
his case to the Refugee Appeals Commission (CRR), an independent jurisdiction which carries
out de facto and de jure reviews of OFPRA decisions, thus acquiescing in the decision taken in
this regard. The complainant’s situation had again been reviewed by the Minister of the Interior
on 19 December 1997 further to the circular of 24 June 1997 on the regularization of the
residence status of certain categories of illegal aliens, which allows prefects to issue residence
permits to individuals who claim to be at risk if returned to their country of origin. Once again,
the complainant limited himself to stating that he was a former member of the Armed Forces
who had deserted from the Algerian army and been threatened by the GIA. For want of details,
and in the absence of any justification for his allegations, his application was rejected. Once
more, the complainant did not contest this decision in the competent domestic court. Before
determining Algeria as the country he should be deported to, the prefect of Indre had conducted a
further review of the risks he would run if returned to that country.
8.8
In the State party’s view, by the day the deportation order was enforced, the
complainant’s situation must be said to have been fairly reviewed without him showing that he
would be in serious and present danger of torture or inhuman treatment if returned to Algeria.
The State party argues that the complainant continues to fail to offering evidence of such danger
to support his complaint to the Committee.
8.9
In the circumstances, the State party was persuaded that the complainant’s appeal to the
Committee was but a device to gain time, thus abusing the State party’s tradition, hitherto always
respected, of suspending enforcement of a deportation order pending the Committee’s decision
on the admissibility of a complaint.
8.10 The State party explains that despite this delaying tactic the French Government would
have acceded to the Committee’s request for interim measures, albeit non-binding ones, if
keeping the complainant, a demonstrably dangerous common criminal, in France had not also
presented a particularly disproportionate risk to public order and the safety of third parties when
set against the absence of any real benefit the complainant could hope to derive from his appeal.
It was a fact that, during his first year in France, the complainant had committed aggravated rape,
threatening his victim with a weapon, for which crime he had been imprisoned in July 1995 and
sentenced by the Loiret Criminal Court to 8 years’ imprisonment and a 10-year judicial ban from
French territory. He had furthermore demonstrated the firmly-rooted and persistent nature of the
danger he represented to public order by two violent attempts to escape during his imprisonment,
in September 1995 and July 1997, each punished by a term of eight months’ imprisonment. In a
situation that was extremely prejudicial to public safety, the State party explains that it
nevertheless delayed enforcement of the deportation order long enough for a final review of the
complainant’s situation, to see whether he could be kept in France as the Committee wished.
Once again, he was found not to have substantiated his alleged fears; in the circumstances, there
was no justification for continuing to hold in France an individual who had more than
demonstrated that he was a danger to public order and whose complaint to the Committee was
quite clearly no more than a ploy to gain time, despite the obvious good faith of the human rights
associations which had supported his application. The State party particularly stresses that house
arrest would not have provided any guarantee, given the complainant’s violent history of escape
attempts. In the circumstances, the State party concluded that sending the complainant back to