CCPR/C/120/D/2532/2015 Prosecutor General dismissed the request on the grounds that the author’s documented bodily harm had been inflicted prior to his arrest. 2.19 On 12 December 2013, the Office of the Prosecutor of Tatarstan rejected the motion brought by the Chair of the Committee for Civil Rights on behalf of the author, arguing that the decision not to open a criminal case against the police investigators had been quashed several times and sent back for further investigation, and that, based on the results of the previous investigation of 24 September 2013, no elements of crime had been established. 2.20 Further motions by the author and the Chair of the Committee for Civil Rights on his behalf were rejected by the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation on 25 April and 17 July 2013, and 7 May 2014. 2.21 The author also filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights on 8 June 2010, which was rejected on 13 March 2014 as inadmissible under articles 34 and 35 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The author claims that he has exhausted all domestic remedies. The complaint 3.1 The author claims that the State party violated his rights under article 7 of the Covenant, as: (a) he was subjected to torture through severe and repeated beatings, including by being forced to wear a gas mask and having the air turned off, thereby preventing him from breathing, which led the author to suffer a heart attack, develop a heart condition, organ failure and partial disability; (b) the police officer in charge rejected the doctors’ request to take the author to a hospital, after he had suffered a heart attack as a result of police violence at the time of his initial arrest; (c) the prison hospital staff failed to provide the author with medical treatment for several days; and (d) the court prosecutor treated the author in a degrading and threatening manner during the pretrial questioning, slapped him with his palm and used obscene language against the author. 3.2 The author claims that, during the judicial proceedings, his rights under article 14 of the Covenant were violated as: (a) all of his appeals on cassation and under the supervisory review proceedings, including his complaints to different authorities aimed at quashing the unlawful, unsubstantiated and unfair verdict, were rejected; (b) the court prosecutor attempted to force him to incriminate himself during the pretrial questioning; (c) the State authorities resorted to torture to force a witness to testify against the author and the court based its sentence on that testimony, obtained under duress, despite the fact that the witness retracted it during the court hearing; and (d) the author was not allowed to present arguments in person before the court and thus his right to defence was violated. State party’s observations on admissibility 4.1 On 31 March 2015, the State party challenged the admissibility of the communication arguing that the author had not raised the allegations of torture and illtreatment either during the trial before the Soviet District Court of Kazan or in his cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. The State party submits that, according to the available documents, the author first claimed that he had been subjected to torture in his request for a supervisory review dated 17 November 2010, almost one and a half years after the alleged torture had occurred. The author’s complaints and applications to different public organizations in that regard were submitted later, in the period 2012-2014. 4.2 The State party claims that the timely complaint to the public authorities in connection to alleged torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is one of the main guarantees of an effective investigation into such allegations. The fact that the author only complained almost one and a half years after the alleged torture took place, indicates a possible abuse of the right to submission to the Committee, but also to the State party authorities. According to the State party, no circumstances prevented the author from lodging a complaint with the State party’s authorities during the above-mentioned period. Therefore, the State party asserts that the communication is inadmissible in this part owing to an abuse of the right to submission under article 3 of the Optional Protocol. 5