CAT/C/38/D/270&271/2005
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establish whether the individual concerned would be personally at risk in the country to
which he would return. It follows that the existence of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant
or mass violations of human rights in a country does not as such constitute a sufficient ground
for determining that a particular person would be in danger of being subjected to torture upon
his or her return to that country; additional grounds must exist to show that the individual
concerned would be personally at risk. Similarly, the absence of a consistent pattern of gross
violations of human rights does not mean that a person cannot be considered to be in danger
of being subjected to torture in his or her specific circumstances.
7.3 The Committee recalls its General Comment No.1 on article 3, which states that the
Committee is obliged to assess whether there are substantial grounds for believing that the
complainant would be in danger of being subjected to torture were he/she to be expelled,
returned or extradited, the risk of torture must be assessed on grounds that go beyond mere
theory or suspicion. However, the risk does not have to meet the test of being highly
probable. The risk need not be highly probable, but it must be personal and present. In this
regard, in previous decisions, the Committee has determined that the risk of torture must be
foreseeable, real and personal.
7.4 The complainants’ claim that there is a risk that they will be tortured if returned to
Azerbaijan, due to their brother’s alleged previous political activities on the basis of which
they claim to have been previously mistreated by the Azerbaijani authorities. The Committee
notes that the complainants have failed to adduce any evidence medical or otherwise that they
were subjected to ill-treatment themselves in Azerbaijan. It also notes that the State party has
provided extensive reasons, based on expert evidence obtained by its Embassy in Ankara, on
why it questioned the authenticity of each document provided by the complainants to support
their own claims and those of their brother, E. N. K.
7.5 The Committee observes that in their comments to the State party’s submission, the
complainants now claim that the document which they had purported to be a judgement,
sentencing the complainants’ brother E. N. K. in abstensia to five years imprisonment, is in
fact a warrant for arrest (see para. 5.7). The complainants challenge the decision to request
information of the Embassy in Ankara, which they claim risked revealing their identities to
the Azerbaijani authorities. The Committee notes that the State party denies that the
complainants were identified, but in any event considers the means by which the State party
conducted its investigations irrelevant for the purposes of establishing whether the
complainants would be subjected to torture upon return to Azerbaijan. Having presented the
State party with documents which were alleged to corroborate the complainants’ claims, it
was up to the State party to attempt to establish the authenticity of those documents. The
Committee also notes that the only other arguments made by the complainants with respect to
the information in the Embassy’s report, were that the discrepancies in the documents were
merely “alleged formal errors” and that they lack the means and necessary legal expertise to
make any further comments. The Committee considers that the complainants have failed to
disprove the State party's findings in this regard, and to validate the authenticity of any of the