The complaint Institute for an examination. However, he never received the report and was told that it had been sent to the investigating judge. The case file (No. Kri. 922/97) was examined on several occasions by the complainant’s counsel but did not contain the report. In response to queries from counsel, the Medical Institute stated in a letter, dated 30 September 1999, that the report had been forwarded to the judge of the Novi Sad District Court.3 To date this report has not been found in the case file. 3.1 The complainant claims that he has exhausted all available criminal domestic remedies by having filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office. In the complainant’s view, civil/ administrative remedies would not provide sufficient redress in his case.4 3.2 The complainant submits that the allegations of violations of the Convention should be interpreted against a backdrop of systematic police brutality to which the Roma and others in the State party are subjected, as well as the generally poor human rights situation in the State party.5 He claims a violation of article 2, paragraph 1, read in connection with articles 1, and 16, paragraph 1, for having been subjected to police brutality inflicting on him great physical and mental suffering amounting to torture, cruel, inhuman and/or degrading treatment or punishment, for the purposes of obtaining a confession, or otherwise intimidating or punishing him.6 2.5 Also on 24 November 1997, the complainant filed a criminal complaint with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad. He gave a detailed account of the incident and alleged that the following crimes had been committed “extraction of statements, civil injury and slight bodily harm.” He also submitted a medial certificate allegedly relating to injuries caused to the complainant by police violence in 1994 (unrelated to the incident in question), a medical report dated 18 November 1997, the police release order, the Novi Sad District Court Order, and photographs of his injuries. Despite many inquiries as to the status of his complaint, including a letter from the complainant’s lawyer, dated 3 March 1999, the Novi Sad Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office, has failed to date to respond in any way to the complaint. Criminal proceedings against the complainant with respect to the charges against him for larceny (Case file No. Kri. 922/97) also remain pending. The complainant is currently serving a four-year prison term for larceny in the Sremska Mitrovica Penitentiary, unrelated to case file, No. Kri 922/97. 3.3 He claims a violation of article 12 alone and/or read in connection with 16, paragraph 1, as the State party’s authorities failed to conduct an official investigation into the incident, which gave rise to this complaint and failed to respond to queries on the status of the complaint. Since the public prosecutor’s office failed formally to dismiss his criminal complaint, he cannot personally take over the prosecution of the case. The complainant alleges that public prosecutors in Serbia and Montenegro seldom institute criminal proceedings against police officers accused of misconduct and delay the dismissal of complaints, sometimes by years, thereby denying the injured party the right to prosecute his/her own case. 2.6 According to the complainant, under article 153 (1) of the CPC, if the public prosecutor finds on the basis of the evidence, that there is reasonable suspicion that a certain person has committed a criminal offence, he should request the investigating judge to institute a formal judicial investigation further to articles 157 and 158 of the CPC. If he decides that there is no basis for the institution of a formal judicial investigation, he should inform the complainant of this decision, who can then exercise his prerogative to take over the prosecution of the case on his own behalf—i.e., in his capacity of a “private prosecutor”. As the Public Prosecutor did not formally dismiss his complaint, the complainant concludes that he was denied the right personally to take over prosecution of the case. As the CPC sets no time limit in which the public prosecutor must decide whether or not to request a formal judicial investigation into the incident, this provision is open to abuse. 3 3.4 The complainant claims a violation of articles 13 alone or read in connection with article 16 of the Convention, as despite exhaustion of domestic remedies all criminal domestic remedies, he has received no redress for the violation of his rights. 4 He refers to international jurisprudence to support this claim. 5 In this context, the complainant provides reports from various national and international non-governmental organizations and the Concluding Observations of CAT of 1998, A/54/44, paras. 35–52. 6 To support his argument that the treatment he received was torture, cruel, inhuman and/or degrading treatment or punishment, he refers to the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the United Nations Body of Principles for the protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, the Council of Europe’s Declaration on the Police and the European Court of Human Rights. This letter has been provided. 90