PART 2: How to Bring a Case to the Court However, the existence of a violation of the Convention is “conceivable even in the absence of prejudice;”332 prejudice means a “damage or detriment to one’s legal rights or claims”.333 Prejudice in the sense of a material or immaterial damage is only necessary in the context of compensation (Article 41 ECHR). c) Potential Victim A potential victim is a person who is at risk of being affected by a law or act of the State. For instance, an individual who is under threat of being tortured if extradited is a potential victim. It is important to note that the Convention does not provide for an actio popularis that would “permit individuals to complain about a provision of national law simply because they consider, without having been directly affected by it, that it may contravene the Convention.” 334 In other words, individuals cannot complain in the abstract about legislation or governmental acts which have not been applied to them personally through a measure of implementation, for instance, criminal prosecution. Therefore, if applicants wish to challenge legislation that has not been applied to them, they must be able to prove that the mere existence of the legislation has a direct effect on the exercise of their Convention rights. d) Indirect Victims An act or an omission may, in addition to directly victimising one or more persons, also have indirect repercussions on other persons who are closely connected to the direct victim(s).335 This occurs primarily in cases involving persons who are disappeared or killed by State agents and in some deportation and expulsion cases. Family members and the next of kin of killed or disappeared persons are usually considered indirect victims. In such circumstances, the indirectly affected persons may bring complaints as victims in their own right. The case of İpek v. Turkey concerned the disappearance of the applicant’s two sons who were last seen in the hands of State security forces. The applicant alleged that he had suffered acute distress and anguish as a result of his inability to find out what had happened to his sons and because of the way the authorities had responded and treated him in relation to his enquiries. The Court held that the question of whether a family member of a disappeared person is a victim of treatment in breach of Article 3 depends on the existence of special factors which give the 332 Amuur v. France, no. 19776/92, 25 June 1996, § 36. 333 Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th ed., West/Thomson Reuters, 2009, p. 1299. 334 Aksu v. Turkey, nos. 4149/04 and 41029/04, 15 March 2012, § 50, and Tănase v. Moldova [GC], no. 7/08, 27 April 2010, § 104. 335 See generally Marko Novakovic, “The Concept of Indirect Victim in the Practice of ECHR”, in Foreign Legal Life, vol. 1, 2011, pp. 261–270. 107