CAT/C/46/D/379/2009
complainant would only violate article 3 if she could show that she would be personally at
risk of being subjected to treatment contrary to the said provision.
4.14 The State party submits, with reference to the Committee’s jurisprudence, that for
the purposes of article 3, the individual concerned must face a foreseeable, real and
personal risk of being tortured in the country to which he or she is to be returned. It also
recalls that, according to the General Comment No. 1, it is for the complainant to present an
arguable case, i.e. to collect and present evidence in support of his or her account of events.
The State party further states that the Swedish migration authorities apply the same kind of
test when considering an application for asylum under the Aliens Act as the Committee will
apply when examining a complaint under the Convention. It notes that the national
authority conducting the asylum interview is in a very good position to assess the
information submitted by an asylum seeker and to evaluate the credibility of his or her
claims. In the present case, it is noteworthy that the Migration Board made its decision after
having held three interviews with the complainant and gathered sufficient information,
which ensured that it had a solid basis for its assessment of the complainant’s need for
protection in Sweden. Therefore, as concerns the merits of the complaint, the State party
relies on the decisions of the Migration Board and the Migration Court and on the reasoning
set out therein.
4.15 The State party maintains that the complainant’s statement as to the reasons why she
left DRC and applied for asylum in Sweden is not credible, accordingly her claim under
article 3 is not substantiated. It contends that no documents have been adduced to prove the
complainant’s identity. She stated during one of the interviews that no one in Sweden or
DRC can verify her identity, her argument being in contradiction with the information
provided by the complainant’s counsel on 22 September 2006, namely that the
complainant’s parents and siblings still reside in DRC in the village of Mushenge, in the
Kasai Occidental province. If that were the case, it would be possible for the complainant to
obtain new identification documents with the assistance of her relatives or, at least, contact
them in order to verify her identity, but she has made no such attempts. The State party
holds that the fact that the complainant has not exhausted all possibilities to prove or at
least to try to verify her identity weakens the general credibility of her submission. She also
has not submitted any document to prove her membership in the parish, and it seems very
unlikely that she would be unable to obtain such documentation, considering her claim that
she was active in the parish and the members of it arranged her escape from prison and paid
for her travel to Sweden.
4.16 With reference to the email correspondence between the complainant’s counsel and
the Swedish embassy in Kinshasa, the State party submits that the embassy confirmed that a
man named Albert Lukusa used to be the pastor of the parish of Nouvelle Cité de David in
Lubumbashi, before passing away in 2004. However, it recalls that the complainant
informed the Migration Board that the pastor’s name was Albert Lusaka (and not Lukusa).
This is also the name that the complainant’s counsel referred to during the third interview
and in the submission of 7 September 2007 to the Migration Court. Thus, the State party
finds it unlikely that a person who has worked closely with the pastor would be mistaken
about his name. Furthermore, the complainant’s statements that she grew up in Mbuji-Mayi
in the central part of the DRC, and lived in Lubumbashi in the southern part of the country
before coming to Sweden contradict the conclusion of the language analysis, according to
which she has been socialized in Kinshasa, i.e. in the eastern part of DRC. In respect to the
medical reports adduced by the complainant, indicating that she suffers from back pain,
shows signs of depression and sought medical aid due to traumatic experiences in her home
country, the State party submits that her allegations that these health problems are a
consequence of the ill-treatment she endured in her country are based solely on her own
word. The fact that the medical reports only contain a very general description of her
symptoms makes them inconclusive when it comes to determining the cause of her health
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