CCPR/C/115/D/2005/2010 of authorized bodies by virtue of the Statute of the Court, there is no alternative source of jurisdiction for the Committee to consider matters concerning States that are not party to the Optional Protocol. 60. The examination of the claims in the present communication that effectively involve a complaint against the United States is not analogous to an examination of the conduct of a State party to the Optional Protocol in the context of an alleged violation of the nonrefoulement obligation by a State party. The Committee may be required to evaluate evidence that concerns the conduct of a State not party to the Optional Protocol in its examination of non-refoulement claims. However, it does not require the Committee to make a finding on whether a State not party to the Optional Protocol has breached its obligations under international law. Non-refoulement claims should therefore be distinguished from the claims in the present communication, most of which require the finding of a breach against the United States before it can consider whether Australia has breached its obligations. In that respect, the State party makes submissions on the merits of allegations relating to its conduct to the extent that it does not require it to make submissions on whether the United States breached its obligations under the Covenant. 61. The asserted legal “black hole” of accountability described by the author refers to the limitation of all treaties that States must consent to be bound by them. It is not incompatible with the object and purpose of the Covenant or the Optional Protocol to rule that a communication, to the extent that it concerns the conduct of a State which is not party to the Optional Protocol, is inadmissible. (b) Claims under article 15 regarding retrospective punishment State party’s observations 62. The author alleges that Australia participated directly in the retrospective punishment and imprisonment of the author by operation of the arrangement for the transfer of persons sentenced by military commissions. This claim is inadmissible because to proceed with it would require the Committee to find first that the application of the offence of “providing material support for terrorism” in the case of the author amounted to a breach of the Covenant by the United States. Author’s comments 63. In an additional submission to the Committee, dated 12 November 2012, the author provides a copy of the decision of 16 October 2012 of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Hamdan v. United States. The Court held that Mr. Hamdan’s conviction for material support for terrorism could not stand, as, when Hamdan committed the conduct (from 1996 to 2001), the military commissions could try violations of the international law of war. However, the international law of war did not proscribe material support for terrorism as a war crime. Furthermore, on 9 January 2015, the convening authority for United States military commissions at Guantanamo Bay dismissed the charges in the case of United States v. Noor Uthman Muhammed, in view of the fact that the charge of providing material support for terrorism had been invalidated by a superior United States civilian appeals court. Finally, on 18 February 2015, the United States Court of Military Commission Review, in the case of David M. Hicks v. United States of America, set aside and dismissed the guilty verdict against the author and vacated his sentence, finding that the author’s conviction was unlawfully retrospective. According to the author, that new fact destroys the inadmissibility argument of Australia that, in order to accept the article 15 claim, the Committee should first determine the legal responsibility of the United States. The United States has now determined its own legal liability for retrospective punishment. 25