CAT/C/55/D/571/2013 State party’s observations on admissibility and merits 4.1 On 27 May 2014, the State party submitted that the complainant and his spouse entered Denmark on 21 May 2010 without any valid travel documents. On the same day, they applied for asylum. On 27 May 2011, the Danish Immigration Service rejected their asylum applications. On 13 January 2012, the Danish Appeals Board upheld the refusal of the Danish Immigration Service. By letter of 8 March 2012, the complainant and his spouse requested the Danish Appeals Board to re-open their asylum proceedings. On 19 July 2013, the Appeals Board refused to re-open the asylum proceedings. By letter of 20 November 2013, the complainant and his spouse again requested the Appeals Board to re-open their asylum proceedings. In its decision of 20 February 2014, the Appeals Board again refused to re-open the complainant’s asylum proceedings. 4.2 On 22 November 2013, the complainant submitted his communication to the Committee, claiming that it would constitute a violation of article 3 of the Convention if the State party were to return him to Afghanistan. On 27 November 2013, the Committee forwarded the communication to the State party and requested it to provide its observations on the admissibility and merits of the communication. The Committee also requested the State party to refrain from deporting the complainant to Afghanistan while his case was being considered by the Committee. On 3 December 2013, the Danish Appeals Board suspended the date for the complainant and his spouse’s departure from Denmark until further notice, in accordance with the Committee’s request. 4.3 The State party submits that according to the report of 11 May 2011 of the Danish Immigration Service, the complainant stated that, inter alia, he had lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for seven or eight years. Then he went with his parents to the Islamic Republic of Iran and lived there for 18 or 19 years due to the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban. In 2005, the family moved back to Kandahar. According to the asylum registration report of 21 May 2010, the complainant stated that he was kidnapped by a gang of robbers who demanded ransom from his family. He was detained for 21 or 22 days. According to the report of 11 May 2011 on the interview with the Danish Immigration Service, the complainant stated that, inter alia, he was kidnapped by the Taliban both in Kandahar and in Kabul. There was an interval of about one month and 20 days between the two kidnappings. As the Taliban had not achieved their goal of forcibly recruiting him during the first kidnapping, they were still interested in him. The complainant stated that his father reported the kidnappings to the police after the second kidnapping. Out of fear for the complainant’s life, his father had not dared to tell the police who had kidnapped him. 4.4 The State party submits that, in the context of the Appeals Board’s decision of 13 January 2012, as grounds for seeking asylum, the complainant stated that he feared being killed by the Taliban and forced to participate in jihad or be killed because his family could not keep on paying ransoms. The complainant stated that he had been detained on 29 May 2009 and subjected to physical abuse by the Taliban, including abuse of a sexual nature, and that the Taliban had wanted him to participate in jihad. The majority of the members of the Appeals Board found that the complainant’s statement about the abductions were inconsistent and elaborative; the Board also took into account that in the asylum registration reports, the complainant and his spouse had only mentioned kidnapping committed by a gang of robbers or criminals. The majority of the members of the Board could not accept as a fact that the complainant had been kidnapped by the Taliban; they also considered it unlikely that the Taliban would have subjected him to torture and sexual abuse during the entire detention of 22 days if the complainant had accepted to participate in jihad almost from the beginning and that, despite that, the Taliban had released him against payment of ransom. 4.5 The State party informs the Committee that the majority of the members of the Board found that the complainant had failed to substantiate how the Taliban would have 6