CAT/C/29/D/193/2001 page 16 Secrecy of inquiry proceedings in the early stages of the investigation is a measure authorized not only by Spanish law, but by nearly all bodies of legislation, as a measure designed to avoid the results of the trial being affected. It does not infringe the rights of the defence, which at the trial stage will have access to all procedural documents and will be able to challenge any irrelevant or illegally obtained evidence. Thus it cannot be considered that any right essential to the defence of the accused has been violated. In the present case, the complainant could not claim that Mr. Azurmendi was deprived of his right to choose a lawyer. 4.18 Finally, with regard to the Committee’s Views in the Akauz Arana case, the State party maintains that that complaint differed from the present complaint in that it claimed a violation of article 3, and not of article 15, of the Convention, which explains why the Committee provided a long list of reasons that should have led the State party to fear that the author might be subjected to torture if he was deported, and why the Committee criticized France for having carried out the deportation, which was later found to be illegal by French courts, and which entailed a direct handover from police to police without respect for the detainee’s rights; this is not the case in the present complaint, where an extradition procedure was carried out in accordance with the relevant regulations and where the complainant had in no way been deprived of asserting her rights before French courts. The complainant’s comments 5.1 In a letter of 23 June 2002, the complainant commented on the State party’s observations on the merits of the complaint. In her comments, the complainant maintains her allegations and reiterates the arguments set out in her complaint. 5.2 In order to demonstrate the relevance of her arguments that the States parties to the Convention must respect article 15 of the Convention, including in cases of extradition or expulsion, the complainant draws the Committee’s attention to the fact that two other European Union countries, Belgium and Portugal, recently refused to extradite three alleged members of ETA pursuant to article 15 of the Convention on the grounds that the requests for extradition were based on evidence obtained as a result of torture. 5.3 The complainant considers that the claim that French courts were under no obligation to make enquiries of a third State in order to assess the validity of the allegations of torture is an extremely restrictive interpretation, which is contrary to the purpose of the Convention. Such an interpretation undermines the founding principle of the Convention, namely the absolute prohibition of torture, and one of its major corollaries, the unlawfulness of evidence obtained as a result of torture. Since the present case involves a serious and well-founded allegation that evidence obtained as a result of torture was used as the basis for a procedure, the State party must use the means at its disposal to ascertain the veracity of such allegations. In the case in question, the French courts could, for example, have requested additional information from the Spanish authorities, since this procedure is quite common in extradition cases. Such a request would have allowed the French authorities to assemble and examine, in an objective, fair and thorough manner, all the elements needed to establish that the aforementioned statement had been obtained unlawfully.