CCPR/C/117/D/2493/2014
where he or she was at real risk of a flagrant breach of that article. However, as with article
6, a high threshold must apply. A flagrant breach of article 5 would occur only if, for
example, the receiving State arbitrarily detained an applicant for many years without any
intention of bringing him or her to trial. A flagrant breach of article 5 might also occur if an
applicant would be at risk of being imprisoned for a substantial period in the receiving
State, having previously been convicted after a flagrantly unfair trial.” The State party
submits in this connection that the crucial factor when assessing whether article 5 of the
European Convention on Human Rights can be deemed to have extraterritorial effect is
whether there is a real risk of a flagrant breach of that article, however a high threshold
applies. Accordingly, given that the author in the present case has failed to establish in any
way how he risks treatment contrary to article 9 of the Covenant if returned to Somalia, the
State party maintains that the author has failed to establish a prima facie case for the
purpose of the admissibility of his communication under article 9, and therefore this part of
the communication is also manifestly unfounded and should be considered inadmissible.
4.6
If the Committee finds the author’s communication admissible, the State party
submits that the author has not sufficiently established that his return to Somalia would
amount to a breach of articles 7 or 9 of the Covenant. In particular, with regard to his claim
under article 7 of the Covenant, the State party observes that in his communication to the
Committee he did not provide any new or specific information on his situation beyond the
information that had already been assessed and applied as the basis for the decision made
by the Refugee Appeals Board on 6 August 2014. Under Danish law, an asylum seeker
must provide such information as is required for deciding whether he falls within section 7
of the Aliens Act. It is incumbent upon asylum seekers to substantiate their grounds for
seeking asylum and to show that the conditions for granting asylum are met. The State
party also notes that according to paragraphs 195 and 196 of the Handbook and Guidelines
on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status, published by the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “the relevant facts of the
individual case will have to be furnished in the first place by the applicant himself”, and
that “it is a general legal principle that the burden of proof lies on the person submitting a
claim”. The State party further notes that the principle that it is normally incumbent upon
asylum seekers to substantiate their grounds for seeking asylum has also been expressed in
the case law of the Human Rights Committee.8
4.7
The State party adds that in the present case, the Refugee Appeals Board found that
the author had failed “to render probable his grounds for asylum”. The Board could not
accept as a fact the author’s statement that he had been persecuted by Al-Shabaab, nor
could it accept as a fact that prior to his departure he had experienced conflicts due to his
clan affiliation. In this respect, the Refugee Appeals Board emphasized, inter alia, that the
author’s statements with regard to the approaches by Al-Shabaab, including with regard to
his attempted escape after the fourth approach, appeared vague and fabricated for the
occasion. The State party observes in this connection that during the asylum interview on
2 April 2014, the author stated that Al-Shabaab had contacted him four times in 2011, each
time in the shop where he worked or at home. However, during the “substantive asylum
interview” conducted by the Danish Immigration Service on 23 April 2014, the author
stated that he had been at a friend’s house the last time he had been contacted by
Al−Shabaab. Furthermore, during the “substantive asylum interview”, the author stated that
in November 2011 a representative of Al-Shabaab had come to his friend’s house, where
the author tried to hide. The representative had told the author that he would keep an eye on
him until the others from Al-Shabaab came and took him to prison. The author had
8
The State party refers to the decision adopted by the Committee on 10 August 2006 in Khan v.
Canada (CCPR/C/87/D/1302/2004).
5