CAT/C/34/D/233/2003** Page 29 namely that the visit when she had allegedly noticed signs of ill- treatment on her son’s body had been interrupted by the Swedish Ambassador’s first visit. The fact that the Ambassador had reported that he had not been able to see any signs of physical abuse on that very same day led the State party to doubt the veracity of the claims made by the complainant’s mother and affected its assessment of the credibility of the complainant’s own information to the Ambassador the same day. 12.17 The State party observes that there was no new information from the complainant regarding ill-treatment during the following year and the view that the information submitted during the embassy’s first visit had been incorrect gradually gained in strength. It was essential that the embassy’s opportunities to carry out the monitoring on a regular basis were not hampered, which could have been the result if the State party had forwarded unconfirmed or incorrect information to the Committee already dur ing the first months of 2002. Considering the situation in April 2002 when the contents of a letter by the complainant’s mother became known, it was therefore, on balance, not deemed appropriate to supplement, at that time, the information already submitted by the State party regarding the embassy’s first visit in its observations of 8 March 2002. 12.18 A different assessment was made by the State party when the complainant, on 5 March 2003, repeated his complaints about ill-treatment at the hands of the Egyptian authorities during the initial stages of his detention. The allegations were much more serious this time and included claims that he had been subjected to torture involving the use of electricity. The mere fact that the complainant came back more than a year later to what had allegedly occurred already at the beginning of the detention period contributed to the fact that a different assessment was made in March 2003. The allegations of torture were therefore immediately raised with representatives of the relevant Egyptian authorities, who refuted them categorically. The State party accounted for the information submitted by the complainant, and the Egyptian authorities’ reactions to it, in its submissions to the Committee of 26 March 2003. It should be reiterated that the information in issue was considerably more serious than that provided by the complainant a year earlier and that it concerned the same time period. 12.19 The State party further contends that by March 2003 the reasons for confidentia lity were not as weighty as before. Even if the information from the embassy’s tenth visit on 5 March 2003 would have ended up in the public domain despite the fact that the proceedings before the Committee were confidential according to the applicable provisions in the Convention and the Committee’s own rules of procedure, the damaging effects were no longer considered to be as serious as before. Following the State party’s initial submissions to the Committee, information had already been in circulation that - if correct - amounted to a breach on the part of Egypt of the diplomatic assurances. Moreover, the issue of torture had already been raised with the Egyptian authorities in March 2003. Furthermore, the monitoring carried out by the embassy had been going on for more than a year by that time and had become routine for both the Egyptian authorities, the embassy and the complainant himself. It was thus no longer likely that there would be a negative impact on the monitoring so that it would be more difficult in the future to ensure the continued effectiveness of the assurances. The State party also stresses that the allegations made by the complainant during the first embassy visit did not amount, in its view, to torture within the meaning of the Convention. It is, however, clear that the ill-treatment complained of at that time would have amounted to inhuman and maybe also cruel treatment, had the allegations been substantiated.