CAT/C/34/D/194/2001 page 8 7.5 The State party adds that it is beyond the bounds of credibility to maintain, as the complainant does, that the purpose of returning her to Spain was to enable the Spanish police to question her about events prior to her flight to France in 1997 and her return to Spain late in 1999. 7.6 In view of the nature of the acts in which the press claims she may have been implicated - 20 or so acts of violence, some of them deadly - the Spanish authorities would not have waited 17 months to question her about those cases if they had seriously believed that she was involved. The mere fact of her weak state could not ha ve delayed her interrogation for 17 months if that had been behind her expulsion to Spain. The State party therefore maintains that it is more likely that her arrest after such a period of time was due to new factors, subsequent to her return, that could not have been taken into account by France at the time when the removal measure was enforced. It also emerges from newspaper articles that the complainant’s membership of the “Ibarra” commando was not known at the time of her expulsion, and she was arrested in March 2001 immediately after being implicated by another ETA member. The State party asserts that it could not have taken these facts into account at the time when the expulsion order was enforced. 7.7 For all the above reasons, no failure to comply with the provisions of article 3 of the Convention can be deemed to have been established. Comments by the complainant 8.1 In a letter of 31 December 2003, the complainant maintains that special situations conducive to the practice of torture exist in a very large number of countries considered democratic by the international community. There is no irrebuttable presumption that torture cannot exist in the States of the European Union. 8.2 The complainant recalls the provision of article 2 of the Convention that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture”. She stresses that all the international human rights bodies have periodically and repeatedly observed persistent acts of torture and ill-treatment of persons suspected of acts of terrorism by members of the Spanish security forces, and have noted that the mechanism of incommunicado detention of persons held in police custody in Spain under its anti- terrorist legislation was conducive to the practice of torture. On several occasions officials found guilty of acts of torture have been pardoned by the Spanish Government, thus creating a climate of impunity and consequently encouraging the practice of torture. The complainant adds that all these observations are corroborated by NGOs and contradict the presumption put forward by the French Government that torture does not exist in Spain. 8.3 The complainant repeats that prior to her expulsion she informed the French authorities that she refused to be expelled to Spain. For that reason she had undertaken a long hunger strike. The French authorities had had to transfer her by ambulance with medical personnel in attendance because of the deterioration in the state of her health. Numerous NGOs and public figures had contacted the French Government in order to prevent her deportation to Spain, but without success.