CAT/C/52/D/372/2009 2.2 On 5 or 6 September 2008,1 the Moroccan gendarmerie took the complainant and the rest of the group by military truck to the border area in the desert separating Morocco and Mauritania. The complainant and the rest of the group were then told by the gendarmes that they must walk across the desert in the direction of the Mauritanian town of Nouadhibou. The distance between the place where they were abandoned and the first inhabited area on the Mauritanian side was approximately 50 kilometres and included a large minefield. The equipment provided to each person by the Moroccan gendarmerie was limited to a pair of plastic flip-flops, a bottle of water and a few sandwiches. The complainant and the rest of the group did not have any way of protecting themselves, nor did they receive any warm clothing, blankets or additional food. 2.3 On 7 September 2008, the complainant and other members of the group were found in the no-man’s-land in the desert between Morocco and Mauritania, some of them suffering from serious wounds resulting mainly from the time spent adrift at sea (sunburn, wounds caused by salt and other open wounds). One member of the group had been killed the previous day after stepping on an anti-personnel mine. Some members of the group were detained by the Mauritanian authorities. The complaint 3.1 The complainant alleges that the Moroccan Government expelled him in a flagrantly illegal manner by taking him to the desert border area with Mauritania without having brought him before a court, depriving him of access to all domestic remedies to appeal his expulsion. According to the complainant, the State party holds no official record of his detention or expulsion. 3.2 The complainant asserts that his abandonment in the desert without suitable equipment by the Moroccan gendarmes was an intentional act by the State party authorities, because the gendarmes were acting with the support of their superiors and the competent political authorities. The complainant considers that these acts subjected him to pain and physical and mental suffering, constituting at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as defined in article 16 of the Convention. 3.3 The complainant notes that all persons have the right to leave any country, including their own, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that simply exercising this basic right should not give rise to inhuman and degrading treatment such as that to which he was subjected. The complainant stresses that Morocco has not signed a readmission agreement with Senegal and, as a result, the Moroccan authorities decided simply to return him to Mauritania without informing the Mauritanian authorities. State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 4.1 The State party observes that the complainant had been expelled from Spain in October 2007 but had nevertheless decided to return there illegally on board a makeshift vessel with a group of undocumented migrants who did not have travel documents or entry visas for Morocco. The State party confirms that on 3 September 2008,2 the Moroccan Royal Navy intercepted a vessel that was in distress as a result of engine failure, en route to the Canary Islands with some 78 African citizens of various nationalities on board as well as 2 unidentified bodies. 1 2 GE.14-07821 The complainant was unable to specify the exact date. This date does not seem to correspond to the date on which the complainant states the boat he was on was intercepted. 3