CAT/C/51/D/441/2010 hope that the courts would consider investigating her son’s allegations of torture, the complainant’s mother filed a petition directly with the Department of Internal Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, requesting the conduct of a prompt and thorough investigation. Her complaint was forwarded to the Internal Security Division of the Department of Internal Affairs of Astana on 21 May 2009. On 22 May 2009, the complainant’s lawyer requested the Astana city prosecutor to issue a ruling on the refusal to investigate the complainant’s complaint of torture. 5.5 After having conducted an investigation, the Internal Security Division refused to initiate criminal proceedings against the police. The complainant claims that the investigation carried out by the authorities, six months after the submission of his first complaint, was not prompt, independent, impartial, thorough or effective, as is required under the Convention. He stresses that no verification of his initial complaint of 10 December 2008 was carried out, the only verification being conducted six months later, following his parents’ complaints. 5.6 The complainant further claims that he was only provided with a copy of the decision of 8 June 2009, by which the Internal Security Division of the Department of Internal Affairs of Astana refused to initiate criminal proceedings against the officers who had tortured him, after the pronouncement of his sentence by the Astana City Court on 16 June 2009. He claims that this was done on purpose, to avoid him appealing against this decision directly during the trial. 5.7 He reiterates that all domestic remedies have been exhausted, contending that the remedies invoked by the State party are ineffective. In substantiation, he notes that the supervisory review proceedings with the Supreme Court or the General Prosecutor’s Office are discretionary and exceptional in nature, as they cannot be initiated by the complainants themselves but that a judge or a prosecutor must request or not the review of a case under the supervisory review proceedings, even without consulting the case file. 5.8 The complainant emphasizes that his allegations of torture were not examined by the Astana City Court or on appeal by the Supreme Court, despite his repeated requests, which also shows the failure of the authorities to adequately address his claims of torture. His sentence of life imprisonment pronounced on 16 June 2009 entered into force on 10 November 2009, after the decision of the Supreme Court. None of the courts dealt with his allegations of torture, which demonstrates that domestic remedies were both unavailable and not effective. 5.9 The complainant adds that it was possible to submit an appeal against the refusal of the investigator of the Internal Security Division of the Department of Internal Affairs of Astana to initiate criminal proceedings on the allegations of torture only in the context of the appeal against the judgment of the Astana City Court. 5.10 In this connection, he points out that, according to article 103 of the criminal procedure code, all complaints relating to a criminal case, irrespective of their addressee are forwarded for action by the court which is examining the criminal case. In the present case, however, the courts examining the complainant’s criminal case failed to assess the complainant’s allegations of torture. He also notes that in its judgement of 4 October 2011 on application No.10641/09, Ushakov v. Russian Federation, the European Court of Human Rights stated that the final decision is considered to be that of the final court and not the decision on the refusal to initiate criminal proceedings, since further appeals on torture are meaningless. For this reason, no obligation to lodge additional appeals against the refusal to open a criminal case on torture with courts or a prosecutor (in addition to the appeal complaint against the judgments of the court of first instance) exists, for purposes of exhaustion of domestic remedies. 7