CAT/C/31/D/228/2003 Page 9 7.2 The Committee must evaluate whether there are substantial grounds for believing that the complainant would be personally in danger of being subjected to torture upon return to Sweden. In assessing the risk, the Committee must take into account all relevant considerations, pursuant to article 3, paragraph 2, of the Convention, including the existence of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. However, the Committee recalls that the aim of such determination is to establish whether the individual concerned would be personally at risk of being subjected to torture 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 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 In the present case, the Committee observes that the Aliens Appeals Board accepted the complainant’s (belated) contention that he had been subjected to torture in January 1997. The Committee notes, however, that the complainant’s case was based on the contention that, as a political activist for the BFP, false charges were brought against him, and that he suffered abuse at the hands of the police, as a result of political pressure from the government authorities then in power. The Committee notes that this practice has been documented by several sources. In the light of the six years that have passed since the alleged torture took place, however, and, more pertinently, given that the complainant’s political party now participates in government in Bangladesh, the Committee considers that the complainant has failed to show that substantial grounds existed, at the time of his removal, that he was at a real and personal risk of being subjected to torture. 8. The Committee against Torture, acting under article 22, paragraph 7, of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, considers that the complainant has not substantiated his claim that he would be subjected to torture upon return to Bangladesh and therefore concludes that the complainant’s removal to that country did not constitute a breach by the State party of article 3 of the Convention. [Adopted in English, French, Spanish and Russian, the English text being the original version. Subsequently to be issued also in Arabic and Chinese as part of the Committee's annual report to the General Assembly.] ----