CAT/C/20/D/59/1996 page 9 7.3 The action of Court of Investigation No. 44 consisted in issuing various instructions for the medical reports on the examinations carried out during the period of incommunicado detention, as well details of the examination conducted in prison, to be entered in the record. In addition, two expert appraisals were obtained on 28 July and 20 November 1992, respectively. The first was by the forensic physician of the examining court and the second by the official forensic expert of Court of Investigation No. 2. 7.4 The author indicated that the forensic reports made available by Court of Investigation No. 2 did not include the one for 31 January 1992, which is not to be found in the record and has therefore not been appraised by the experts. The judicial proceedings also failed to determine the exact time of the prison medical examination on 3 February, although the certificate sent by the penitentiary centre to the author's counsel suggests that it took place in the morning. 7.5 The order definitively shelving the proceedings states that “it is necessary to establish, on the one hand, the impossibility of furnishing proof of any of the acts of aggression recounted by the complainant, i.e. blows to the head, the placing of a plastic bag over the head, kicks to the genitals, hair-pulling and loss of consciousness, since they were not confirmed in any medical examination and yet should have left some kind of palpable injury, according to the forensic medical report, and, on the other hand, the existence of other injuries as described for the first time in the medical report of 3 February”. It also indicates that it is not possible to reach any conclusion regarding whether the cause of the injuries described “was accidental, intentional or self-inflicted, since the three possibilities are compatible with the objective findings, and the statement of the complainant, which constitutes the other source of information, is not supported by the chronology of the injuries established by the existing medical reports. In view of the impossibility of establishing the cause of the injuries, no offence can be said to have been committed and the proceedings must therefore be shelved”. 7.6 This decision was challenged in an appeal based, among other things, on the following arguments: - With regard to virtually all the acts of aggression described by the author (blows to the head, kicks to the genitals, hair-pulling and loss of consciousness), it was argued that these involved the use of methods intended to leave no physical marks on the victim. Neither the alleged forms of psychological or sexual torture, nor most of the physical torture (“bagging”, “hooding” and low-voltage electric shocks) left external signs of injury on the body. - With regard to the dating of the various bruises, the complainant adduced the theory put forward by the first expert, defining two of them as between two and six days old, while the other two were said to be more recent. The fact that the bruises had not been detected earlier could have been due to a defective physical examination or to the poor light.