4.5 The author stated that there was no impartial and independent inquiry during the conduct of the preliminary investigation, which was instituted as a result of what she had told the doctor at the penitentiary centre. The three specialized medical reports ordered by the court were clearly at odds over the dating of her bruises by their colour (between four hours and six days), which was crucial to the outcome of the inquiry. She said that no statements were taken from those who might have been responsible for the alleged offence. 4.8 The author concluded that there had been breaches of articles 12 and 13 of the Convention against Torture. She submitted that current “antiterrorist” legislation encouraged torture, infringing the basic right to counsel, hampering the collection of evidence that torture had been employed and, ultimately, guaranteeing that torture would go unpunished. In her view, that legislation runs counter to the spirit of article 2 of the Convention against Torture. 4.9 Finally, the author also submitted that the action taken against her on account of her presumed involvement with an armed gang served to show that the only evidence against her was that obtained under torture and duress from Mr. Eguskiza and Mr. Rojo, in breach of article 15 of the Convention against Torture. 4.6 The only investigation that was done after the partial retraction of the stay of proceedings ordered as a result of the remedy filed by the author on 9 September 1994 took the form of a third specialized report by the medical examiner attached to the Court of Investigation on whether the mistreatment alleged by the author would have left traces that could be detected by a doctor on examination, hours or days later. This last medical report, dated 22 November 1994, stated that “the acts of aggression reported should have left objectively observable injuries in the parts of the body allegedly concerned, particularly the scalp and the genitals, unless the injuries were extremely slight. When a person is beaten unconscious, there will very probably be subsequent injuries, not only to the back and shoulders but to other areas as well.” This opinion, combined with the National High Court doctor’s lack of rigour in estimating the date of her injuries, led the court to declare the case definitively shelved. The Committee’s admissibility decision 5.1 At its eighteenth session the Committee considered the admissibility of the communication and ascertained that the same matter had not been, and was not being, examined under another procedure of international investigation or settlement. It observed that the State party had raised no objection regarding admissibility and considered that the available domestic remedies had been exhausted. 5.2 The Committee considered that the communication might raise issues under articles 12 and 13 of the Convention, notably in relation to the period of over a month that elapsed between when the court received the medical report and when it heard the author, and what the court was doing during the almost 11 months that separated the author’s statement from the stay of proceedings. 4.7 The author pointed out that the shelving order referred to the impossibility of furnishing proof of any of the acts of aggression recounted, which included blows to the head, kicks to the genitals, hair-pulling and loss of consciousness. She emphasized that the kinds of violence she related do not leave physical marks on the victim, and that neither any of the kinds of psychological and sexual torture she alleged, nor most of the physical torture (“bagging”, “hooding” and low-voltage electric shocks), leaves external signs of injury on the body. She submitted that, while a victim’s testimony was not in itself always enough to secure a conviction, it was nonetheless true that such testimony, in cases where objective tests were not possible and there was no reason to doubt its veracity, had sufficed in many instances to bring in a guilty verdict when the following stipulations had been met: absence of reasonable doubt, verisimilitude corroborated by circumstantial evidence, and consistency in the charges. She stressed that no statements were taken from the officers on guard, and that the person who had shared the cell with her while she was being held incommunicado had not even been called as a witness to describe how she had been held in custody. 5.3 As to the author’s allegation that her conviction violated article 15 of the Convention, the Committee noted the comment in the judgement of the National High Court that the statements made to the police by the accused (including the author) had not been taken into consideration because of the possibility that torture had been used. The author’s convention was based on other, uncompromised, voluntary statements made when the accused had been accompanied by counsel of their own choosing. In the circumstances, the Committee found that the author’s claim of a violation of article 15 lacked the requisite corroboration, rendering it incompatible with article 22 of the Convention. 5.4 The Committee therefore decided that the communication was admissible inasmuch as it raised issues relating to articles 12 and 13 of the Convention. State party’s merits submission 6.1 On 10 November 1997, the State party reiterated that, although the author had been assisted 39