- CAT/C/34/D/195/2002 Page 7 7.2 Concerning the locus standi of Action of Christians for the Abolition of Torture, the Committee noted that the statement signed by the complainant on 29 November 2001 authorizing the organization to act on his behalf before the Committee was in the file submitted to it, and therefore considered that the complaint complied with the conditions set out in rules 98.2 and 107.1 of its rules of procedure. 7.3 On the exhaustion of domestic remedies, the Committee noted that on 2 January 2002 the complainant had appealed to the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal against the ruling of the Limoges Administrative Court upholding the deportation order, and that that appeal had no suspensive effect. Concerning the State party’s argument that the complainant had had, but did not pursue, the option of applying to the interim relief judge of the Bordeaux court to suspend enforcement of the deportation order, the Committee noted that the State party had not indicated that the complainant should make such application by a specific deadline, implying that the application could in theory have been made at any time up to the moment when the Administrative Court of Appeal ruled on the merits of the appeal. 7.4 The Committee also noted that the complaint did not constitute an abuse of the right to submit a communication and was not incompatible with the Convention. 7.5 The Committee also noted that on 30 September 2002, after communicating its comments on the admissibility of the complaint, the State party had enforced the order for the deportation of the complainant to Algeria. 7.6 In the circumstances, the Committee considered it ought to decide whether domestic remedies had been exhausted when examining the admissibility of the complaint. In its view it was unarguable that, since the deportation order had been enforced before the Administrative Court of Appeal reached a decision on the appeal, the complainant had, from the moment he was deported to Algeria, had no opportunity to pursue the option of applying for suspension. 7.7 The Committee noted that, when it called for interim measures of protection such as those that would prevent the complainant from being deported to Algeria, it did so because it considered that there was a risk of irreparable harm. In such cases, a remedy which remains pending after the action which interim measures are intended to prevent has taken place is, by definition, pointless because the irreparable harm cannot be averted if the domestic remedy subsequently yields a decision favourable to the complainant: there is no longer any effective remedy to exhaust after the action which interim measures were intended to prevent has taken place. In the present case, the Committee felt no appropriate remedy was available to the complainant now he had been deported to Algeria, even if the domestic courts in the State party were to rule in his favour at the conclusion of proceedings which were still under way after the extradition. 7.8 In the present case, according to the Committee, the essential purpose of the appeal was to prevent the deportation of the complainant to Algeria. In this specific case, enforcing the deportation order rendered the appeal irrelevant by vitiating its intended effect: it was inconceivable that, if the appeal went in the complainant’s favour, he would be repatriated to France. In the circumstances, in the Committee’s view, the appeal was so intrinsically linked to the purpose of preventing deportation, and hence to the suspension of the deportation order, that

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