CCPR/C/128/D/2707/2015 4.2 The forensic medical examination report of 28 June 2009 established that the cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation provoked by the closure of the respiratory tract due to vomiting. Nevertheless, on 6 July 2009, the Prosecutor’s Office of Ismoil Somoni district initiated criminal proceedings (on suspicion of causing death by negligence) in order to clarify the circumstances of the case. The case was subsequently suspended on several occasions owing to the failure to identify the persons to be indicted. 4.3 In November 2011, the Prosecutor General’s Office resumed the proceedings and appointed a forensic medical examination commission. According to the commission’s conclusion of 3 April 2012, the cause of death of the author’s son was in fact a lifethreatening heart arrhythmia. 4.4 The State party alleges that the author’s son suffered from a heart disease during his lifetime. The conditions that exacerbated his life-threatening arrhythmia were: (a) an excessive increase in the quantity of blood in the blood vessels due to drinking large amounts of liquid before death (according to witness testimonies, the author’s son, along with two friends, drank more than 30 glasses of beer together that day; (b) physical fatigue (that evening the author’s son trained in the gym, then he drank beer and resisted six or seven police officers who were trying to apprehend him in the police car); (c) stress; and (d) the author’s son confinement for 5 or 6 minutes in a densely packed and narrow space as he was transported in a special section of the police vehicle to the police department of Ismoil Somoni district. 4.5 According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination commission, it was not possible to establish precisely which of the above factors caused the death of the author’s son. The State party claims that the external injuries detected on his body (scratches) were not related to his death and could have been the result of his resistance to the police officers trying to apprehend him and put him in the police vehicle. 4.6 The State party explains that, during the criminal investigation, numerous witnesses were questioned, including the friends of the author’s son who accompanied him to the Department of Internal Affairs of Ismoil Somoni district. They all denied having seen deliberate infliction of physical and mental suffering, i.e. torture, in the police vehicle. 4.7 In light of the above, the State party concludes that the authorities’ decision to suspend the criminal investigation into the death of the author son’s owing to lack of corpus delicti was a legally sound decision. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 5.1 On 20 April 2016, the author challenged the State party’s arguments and rejected the assertion that her son had been drunk on the day of the incident. It was stated in the forensic medical examination commission’s opinion, dated 3 April 2012, that he had drunk 30 glasses of beer with friends. However, the first forensic expert examination of 28 June 2009 concluded that “in the absence of a gas-liquid chromatograph [a device for determining alcohol in the blood and other body fluids], it was not possible to identify the concentration of alcohol in the blood”. Therefore, the author contests the credibility of the information provided by the State party that her son was drunk. The forensic examination indicated that during the autopsy there was a smell of alcohol, but it did not provide other information in that regard. 5.2 Furthermore, the State party refers to the testimony of numerous witnesses who denied that the health of the author’s son was intentionally harmed. In the course of the investigation, the police officers and the two friends of the author’s son were interrogated. On the night of the death of the author’s son, the two friends were kept in the police department until the morning. Nobody, including the author, was allowed to see them and talk to them. The author claims that these facts suggest that they were threatened and/or subjected to pressure to deny the ill-treatment of the author’s son. 5.3 On the day of the incident, there were numerous other witnesses present at the scene, unknown to the author. The author argues that it was the State party’s legal obligation to conduct an effective investigation and to identify, locate and question those witnesses, but it failed to do so. 4