CAT/C/31/D/188/2001 Page 10 5.1 In a letter of 7 May 2002, the complainant challenged the State party’s argument that he was supposedly unwilling to turn to the Tunisian justice system and make use of domestic remedies. 5.2 The complainant believes that the recourse procedures are excessively protracted. He notes, in this context, that the appeal procedure against his conviction in 1995 comprised 18 sessions, lasting from June 1995 to the end of May 1996. According to the complainant, these delays were entirely due to the authorities, who repeatedly postponed consideration of his appeal because they were embarrassed to have to convict a person - who, to make matters worse, was a political opponent - for illegally attempting to leave the country. He says that this conviction would in itself be harmful to the image of the regime and that this made it harder to hand down a stiff sentence. He believes that this delay in a simple appeal procedure demonstrates that the lodging of a complaint of torture - even assuming that such a complaint would be accepted - would be an even more protracted process. The complainant also describes how, when his name appeared in various reports by non-governmental organizations, including after his conviction in 1995, the authorities reacted by worsening the conditions in which he was held, subjecting him to mental and corporal punishment and transferring him to prisons far from his family home, and harassing his family, who were placed under stricter supervision. In support of his arguments, he cites the case of Mr. Abderraouf Khémais Ben Sadok Laribi, who died in police custody as a result of ill-treatment. According to the complainant, even though the dead man’s family lodged a complaint of intentional homicide against the Minister of the Interior on 9 August 1991, and even though the case received extensive media coverage, as a result of which his family received material compensation and an interview was granted with an adviser of the President, the case was closed without any effective investigation, while the minister in office at the time was given full protection by the Government. 5.3 The complainant also believes that the recourse procedures would not lead to any satisfactory remedies. He enumerates the efforts he made, to no avail, in 1992 to seek a medical examination and, in 1995, to secure protection from the judicial authorities against the illtreatment to which he was being subjected. For that reason, it seemed unlikely to the complainant that he would obtain satisfaction from the judicial authorities. The complainant explains that his case with the magistrate was not an isolated instance and, in that context, submits an extract from a report by the Tunisian Committee for Human Rights and Freedoms. He maintains that the judicial system is not independent and gave him no protection when he was convicted in 1992 and 1995. He says that he has been a victim of the “culture of torture” in Tunisia and that it was psychologically very difficult for him to submit his complaint to the Committee against Torture for fear of reprisals against his family. He adds, lastly, that his hunger strikes against his ill-treatment failed to bring any results, apart from some material concessions. Similarly, the letters he wrote to the administration of the prisons following these hunger strikes also proved unavailing. In addition, the transfer of the prison service to the Ministry of Justice has done nothing to change the complicity of the service in such practices. The complainant cites extracts from reports by the International Federation for Human Rights and the Tunisian Committee for Human Rights and Freedoms in support of his observation that complaints of torture do not succeed and that the authorities exert pressure to prevent the lodging of such complaints. He also maintains that the administrative supervision under which he was placed, which involved constant supervision by eight different authorities, accompanied by acts of intimidation, meant that lodging a complaint would have placed him in danger.