CAT/C/49/D/346/2008 5.2 In addition, in its official request for the complainant’s extradition dated 20 September 2007, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice stated that the Brazilian Constitution prohibits capital punishment, life imprisonment, sentences of forced labour and any other form of cruel punishment; thus, any punishment that constitutes an affront to human dignity is constitutionally unlawful and therefore cannot be imposed in Brazil. The State party further notes that, to this day, no complaint has been lodged with the Committee against Brazil, even though the country has recognized the competence of the Committee to consider individual complaints. 5.3 The State party adds that, in line with the jurisprudence of the Committee, the existence of violations, even if they were confirmed to have taken place, does not in itself constitute a sufficient reason to conclude that a person runs the risk of being tortured, since the risk must be personal. It is therefore up to the complainant to show evidence of a risk and to prove that this risk extends beyond mere suppositions or suspicions. The complainant has not, however, provided any such evidence to the Committee, nor did he submit any to the Monegasque judicial authorities during the domestic court case. The only pieces of evidence submitted to the Monegasque courts were two letters from Brazilian prisoners containing general complaints regarding prison conditions in Brazil and a petition signed by several prisoners. None of these documents referred specifically to a prison in which the complainant might eventually be held, and the State party therefore has legitimate doubts as to the actual value of these documents. 5.4 The State party notes that the complainant did not claim that he would be at risk of torture when his case was before the Court of Appeal, sitting in chambers, even though he had applied to that court to rescind the extradition order. The complainant had simply made mention of the documents referred to above (see paragraph 5.3) but did not cite them as grounds for his request for the extradition order to be set aside, even though the risk of illtreatment or torture does constitute a legal ground for a refusal to extradite under article 6 of Extradition Act No. 1.222 of 28 December 1999. The complainant therefore did not give the courts the opportunity to rule on this point. Yet, in a previous case concerning the extradition of a person from the State party to the Russian Federation, the Court of Appeal had requested guarantees from the Russian authorities by appending a number of requirements to its ruling, such as the authorization of family and consular visits, since the person concerned had produced evidence that he had previously been subjected to illtreatment in the Russian Federation.7 This portion of the case law of the Court of Appeal was known to the complainant’s counsel, since he had also served as counsel for the person concerned in the case dealing with extradition to the Russian Federation, which had taken place prior to the case at hand. The State party therefore wonders why the same counsel did not put forward this plea in the complainant’s case. The State party suggests that the omission of this argument shows that counsel was unable to establish that the complainant would run any risk of torture or ill-treatment if he were returned to Brazil. 5.5 Moreover, the pleadings submitted by the complainant’s counsel to the Court of Appeal of Monaco made only general points and referred to the possibility of violations of the right to a defence. They did not provide any real evidence of incidents of ill-treatment constituting a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. Counsel instead focuses on his assertions that the complainant was unjustly convicted, that he was convicted by a single judge in a highly political climate and that he was given a disproportionately severe sentence. 7 6 The State party cites the decision of the Court of Appeal, sitting in chambers, in the case of E. Bourmaga dated 30 November 2004 (copy provided). GE.13-40769