CCPR/C/126/D/2410/2014 Annex Individual opinion of Committee member José Manuel Santos Pais (partly dissenting) 1. I join the other members of the Committee in finding a violation of the author’s rights under article 14 (3) (b) and (d) of the Covenant and in deciding not to examine separately the author’s claim under article 14 (3) (e). However, I regret not being able to join the Committee’s decision in finding a violation of the author’s rights under article 7, read in conjunction with articles 2 (3) and 9 (1) and (2), of the Covenant. 2. It has been the standing case law of the Committee that it is for the courts of States parties to evaluate the facts and the evidence in each case, or the application of domestic legislation, unless the evaluation is manifestly arbitrary or amounts to a denial of justice (para. 12.4). Nonetheless, the Committee seems not to have followed this case law in its Views. 3. Regarding the violation of article 7, read in conjunction with article 2 (3), of the Covenant, the Committee concluded that nothing in the material on file allowed it to conclude that the investigation into the allegations of the author’s cruel and inhuman treatment had been carried out promptly or effectively by the authorities (para. 13.4). However, the Committee itself refers to several arguments of the State party that clearly rebut this conclusion (para. 13.2). 4. The author was, according to the State party, detained at 5 a.m. on 13 September 2005 as a suspect in the murder of a couple and, when taken to a temporary detention facility, he did not complain about the beatings by the police. His parents were informed by telephone of his detention. On the same day, he was placed in a temporary detention centre, on the grounds that he had attempted to flee. The author did not complain about the beatings by the police while in the temporary detention centre. On 14 September 2005, the author was interrogated in the presence of a lawyer, but he refused to testify. He also did not request to have another lawyer appointed due to inadequate defence. At 4.50 a.m. on 15 September 2005, the author was detained again as a suspect in the attempted murder of a sales clerk (para. 10.2). 5. A second inquiry procedure, by another investigator, was initiated by the Bogotol Inter-district Prosecutor’s Office, in October 2005, after the author’s lawyer submitted a complaint. However, during the course of the inquiry, the author refused to testify. The inquiry investigator interrogated three police officers who explained that, at the time of detention, the author had displayed active resistance to the police by taking swipes at them with an iron and moving towards the exit, which had prompted the officers to use force to detain him. The medical examination of the author concluded that he had suffered light injuries to his face, which was consistent with the fact that the author may have resisted his arrest. Therefore, the inquiry concluded that the police officers had acted within their powers and refused to bring criminal charges against them (para. 10.3). 6. There was another inquiry in 2008, which also resulted in a refusal to charge the police officers, in the absence of corpus delicti (para. 10.4). This decision was upheld both by the Bogotol District Court and the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court, which held that the police officers had acted within their powers while detaining the author (para. 10.4). In 2013, the Bogotol District Court denied another complaint by the author against the unlawful actions of the police related to the night of his arrest, again due to the lack of grounds for opening a criminal investigation against the police officers (paras. 8.6 and 10.4). Finally, on 1 July 2014, the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court confirmed the decision of the Central District Court of Krasnoyarsk City, which denied the appeal by the author against the decision of the Deputy Prosecutor of Krasnoyarsk Region of 25 February 2014. By this decision, the prosecutor refused to reopen the case of the author on the basis of an allegation of manipulation of evidence used against him during forensic examinations (paras. 8.2–8.3). We have, therefore, successive investigations by the competent domestic authorities, all of which reject the author’s allegations given the absence of corpus delicti. 15