CAT/C/41/D/291/2006 page 15 trial court, they are aimed at obtaining compensation for harm suffered. A person can become a civil party to a criminal prosecution by submitting a written request, signed by the plaintiff or his or her representative, to the court handling the case. The court considers the admissibility of the application to become a civil party and, where appropriate, declares it admissible. The court concerned joins the application to the merits, and rules on both in a single judgement. However, when the civil party is acting as the principal, the court issues an immediate ruling on the application. 6.7 In conclusion, the State party considers that the present communication is inadmissible under article 22 of the Convention, given that it has been established that the available domestic remedies have not been exhausted. The remedies recognized by Tunisian legislation to all plaintiffs are effective and enable them to substantiate the claims that are the subject of their complaint in a satisfactory manner. Consequently, the submission of the complaint by the complainant to the Committee is unjustified. Complainant’s comments on the State party’s observations 7.1 On 23 April 2007, the complainant wrote that the launch of an investigation by the Tunisian authorities solely as a result of the communication submitted to the Committee constitutes further irrefutable evidence of the ineffectiveness and futility of domestic remedies in Tunisia. The incident at the origin of the complaint took place on 22 July 2004 and the complainant immediately took steps to have her representative file a complaint with the appropriate authorities on 30 July 2004. Referring to the initial communication, the complainant reiterates that the Tunisian authorities refused to investigate her complaint or even to accept that it should be examined. The Tunisian judicial system offers no remedies to the victims of torture and ill-treatment, and it is therefore futile to attempt to exhaust them. The fact that the Tunisian authorities took no action for 23 months after the complaint was submitted, and that they then, as they have admitted, launched an investigation solely because the complaint had been submitted to the Committee, provides further evidence of the futility of attempting to exhaust domestic remedies in Tunisia. The action taken by the State party in response to her complaint is symptomatic of the tactics used by the State party to discourage complainants and to prevent their cases from reaching the Committee, and does not reflect a genuine desire to investigate and prosecute officials of the State party. 7.2 The application of remedies in Tunisia is, according to the complainant, unreasonably prolonged, given that the State party waited 23 months before launching an investigation which is still in its preliminary phase, that is, in the phase where evidence is collected. No charges have yet been laid, still less have any proceedings been initiated. Even supposing that the investigation would be conducted in good faith and lead to the prosecution of the perpetrators, it could reasonably be expected that the proceedings would be very long, and perhaps drawn out over several years. Given the delay of 23 months before the investigation was even opened, these facts support the conclusion that the application of domestic remedies is unreasonably prolonged. The complainant draws attention to the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, which concluded that “a delay of over three years for the adjudication of the case at first instance, discounting the availability of subsequent appeals, was ‘unreasonably prolonged’ within the