22 EL HASKI v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT Article 15 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. They further observed that the “test of real risk” was in fact the test applied by the Court when it examined allegations of a potential violation of Article 3 in the event of the extradition or expulsion of an individual to a State where he might be subjected to treatment or punishment in breach of that Article. In cases such as the present, it was not a matter of determining whether there was a risk of such treatment, but whether such treatment had actually been inflicted on those individuals whose testimony was at issue. 65. In the Government’s submission, even supposing that the applicant’s allegations concerning the interviews carried out in France were “arguable”, within the meaning of the Court’s case-law, the Court of Appeal had found, after a detailed examination of the available documents, that it not been established that the French authorities had breached Article 3. The court had begun by finding, in the light of the documents from the French proceedings, that all the procedural safeguards and the rights of the persons interviewed had been respected (the right to be immediately informed of the “complaint” and of one’s rights in police custody, the right to request an examination by a doctor, the right to have a lawyer, etc.). It had then found that the conditions in which the impugned interviews had taken place were acceptable and that the allegations of violence, intimidation and torture or inhuman and degrading treatment on the part of the police officers at the time of arrest and questioning, judging from the statements in question and from the file, lacked credibility. It had moreover taken the view that it did not suffice for the applicant to refer to general considerations contained in reports by NGOs on the functioning of the French judicial system in order to show that there had been a breach of Article 3 of the Convention. The Government further pointed out that the French witnesses had not brought proceedings before the Court for a violation of that provision. As regards the testimony taken in Morocco, the Government pointed out that the Court of Appeal had found that the applicant had not adduced the slightest evidence of a violation of Article 3. They draw attention to the following findings: “... the fact of citing in general terms various reports of human rights organisations – admittedly respectable ones – does not adduce any concrete evidence that would be capable of giving rise in the present case to the above-mentioned reasonable doubt as to the violence, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment that was allegedly inflicted on the individuals interviewed in Morocco ...”; and “... the contradictions allegedly contained in those statements, according to defence counsel’s argument, are not capable of justifying the claim that the individuals who were interviewed and/or tried in Morocco were subjected to any inhuman and degrading treatment or torture”.

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