CCPR/C/116/D/2297/2013 5.8 The author was interviewed for the first time by the investigating judge between midnight and 4 a.m., after 20 days of interrogation. In a state of extreme fatigue and fearing reprisals, he did not dare raise his allegations of torture on that occasion. 5.9 The author considers that he is the victim of an enforced disappearance, 7 as defined in the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. The author was arrested on 17 September 2009, yet the State party has provided no explanations in regard to events on that date. There is no indication in the case file of the time and date of the arrest or the authorities that carried it out, and the public prosecutor, who must in any case have known of the author’s disappearance through the Algerian Consulate in Brussels (which represents the interests of Algeria in Luxembourg), which had itself been alerted by the author’s family, failed to apply to the Indictments Chamber of the Algiers Court of Appeal for information about the author’s fate. The family tried numerous times to contact the author on his mobile telephone, but without success. 5.10 With regard to the alleged violation of article 9, the author notes that, according to the State party, the Chief Prosecutor received directly from the criminal investigation officers a report stating that his arrest had taken place on 28 September, not on 17 September 2009 as the author attests; that his detention in police custody had thus lasted eight days; and that the detention had been authorized by the Bir Mourad Raïs prosecutor, as required under article 65 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. However, the case file contains no such report or any evidence that these steps were taken, in breach of articles 68 and 68 bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Nor does the file contain, as the author notes, the report setting out the grounds for his detention in police custody or any document from the public prosecutor authorizing the detention or its extension, which renders the author’s detention arbitrary, in violation of article 9 of the Covenant. 5.11 Concerning article 7, in addition to submitting a complaint to the Chief Prosecutor on 3 November 2011, the author had already spoken, at his hearing before the investigating judge on 17 November 2009, of the humiliation he had experienced during his period in police custody, “humiliation so extreme that he no longer felt human”. He also referred to having been deprived of sleep, denied access to hygiene facilities and refused any contact with the outside world. The author recalls the Committee’s jurisprudence, according to which incommunicado detention, without contact with the outside world, constitutes of itself a violation of article 7 of the Covenant.8 Contrary to the State party’s assertions, other persons accused in the East-West Highway affair have claimed to have been victims of torture, including one co-accused in the record of a hearing held on 18 November 2009. 9 This erroneous claim by the State party forms part of a pattern of procedural harassment of the author, which he believes relates directly to the complaint of torture he lodged in 2011. 5.12 Furthermore, to clear itself of the allegations of torture, the State party relies on a medical report drawn up during the author’s detention in police custody. 10 However, this document is anonymous and appears to have been drafted by the criminal investigation officers themselves. The author maintains that he was not examined by a doctor, either during his period in police custody or afterwards. In addition, while the medical report bears the DRS letterhead, there is no official seal, and it is thus impossible to know which authority or doctor produced it. The medical examination should have been entrusted to an independent doctor, who could have verified the circumstances of the author’s detention. 7 8 9 10 GE.16-07656 The author does not refer to a specific article of the Covenant. See Medjnoune v. Algeria, para. 8.4. In the record of the hearing of one co-accused, dated 18 November 2009, reference is made to illtreatment that that individual allegedly suffered while in detention (annex 12 of the initial communication). Annex 14 of the initial communication. 9