application for pardon with the Vizcaya Provincial Court, with the request that the sentence should not be carried out until a decision had been reached on their request for a pardon. Although the Court did not manage to order execution of the sentence, the complainant could have asked it to do so. Once the pardon had been granted, the Civil Guards were suspended from duty for one month and one day. Complainant’s comments on the State party’s observations regarding the admissibility and merits of the complaint 5.1 On the admissibility of the complaint, the complainant indicates that, in the circumstances of his case, there were no domestic remedies against the granting of a pardon. He adds that neither the 1870 statute on pardons nor the position adopted by the Constitutional Court permits a private individual to object to a pardon. He cites the Constitutional Court judgement of 5 October 1990, which says that pardons “as a gesture of grace, shall be decided upon by the executive and granted by the King. Such decisions shall not be examined on their merits by the courts, including this Constitutional Court”. The complainant maintains that the most recent judgements of the Constitutional Court, those handed down between January and March 2001, did not introduce a means of appealing against pardons but merely gave the sentencing court a certain degree of procedural control. The victim is not informed that a pardon has been granted and is thus denied the opportunity to appeal. The complainant states that the pardon procedure specifies that the victim of the pardoned crime should be given a hearing. He objected to the pardons when consulted, but his views were not binding. 5.2 On the merits, the complainant maintains that the pardon granted by the authorities to Civil Guards convicted of torture is incompatible with the purpose and object of the Convention, inasmuch as it calls into question the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Granting pardons creates a climate of impunity that encourages State officials to commit further acts of torture. When the pardon was granted, the accused’s sense that impunity prevailed was validated by the Spanish authorities’ common practice of pardoning individuals accused of torture. The State party should have redressed the wrongs suffered by the complainant and taken steps to ensure that such torture did not happen again. The complainant insists that the pardon granted to the Civil Guards denies the very existence of the torture and ill-treatment of which he was the victim. Issues and proceedings before the Committee 6.1 Before examining the merits of a communication, the Committee against Torture must determine whether it is admissible under article 22 of the Convention. 6.2 The State party is of the view that the communication is inadmissible because domestic remedies have not been exhausted. It claims that, if the complainant considers that his rights under the Convention have been violated by the pardoning of the three Civil Guards, he ought to have put this argument to the Spanish courts. The complainant maintains that there were no available and effective means of challenging the granting of a pardon. 6.3 The Committee observes that the State party confined itself to asserting that recent decisions by the courts permit the judicial review of pardons, and that the Convention against Torture can be invoked before the domestic courts; it did not indicate what specific remedies were available to the complainant, nor what degree of judicial review pardons would be subject 150