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According to the Swedish Immigration Board (SIB), about 26,500 people per year have applied for asylum in Sweden during the last decade. Experiences from Denmark show that up to 20% of those who seek asylum have been subjected to torture or severe ill-treatment in their home countries.¹ Since 1992, most of these applicants have been examined at the Centre for Torture and Trauma survivors (CTD) in Stockholm.² The findings are described in medicolegal certificates submitted to the immigration authorities.

The present study was primarily aimed at analysing the relationship between the medicolegal certificates and the chances of obtaining asylum in 52 randomly selected CTD cases from the years 1994-96. The medicolegal certificates were classified according to extent of compatibility between testimony …