CCPR/C/109/D/1910/2009 also kept secret from the lawyers and families of those convicted. The author also submits that the death penalty in Belarus is administered secretly, and neither the convict, nor his lawyers or family are informed beforehand of the date of the execution. Accordingly, a person sentenced to death has no real possibility to submit a communication to the Committee after his applications for a supervisory review and presidential pardon have been rejected. 5.3 The author submits that her son had submitted an application for presidential pardon on 13 November 2009. She submits that this application was most probably rejected and describes in detail the numerous unsuccessful attempts she made to obtain information regarding her son’s whereabouts and whether he had been executed, starting on 19 March 2010. She submits that the execution of her son was acknowledged by the Minister of Internal Affairs in his media statement of 2 April 2010. 5.4 The author further submits that the State party’s submission was only made in abstracto and that it did not challenge the substance of the majority of the author’s claims. As to the State party’s argument that the author’s invocation of an alleged violation of article 6 of the Covenant was unfounded, the author recalls that, according to the Committee’s jurisprudence, the imposition of a death sentence upon conclusion of a trial in which the provisions of the Covenant have not been respected constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life. The author notes that the State party does not contest the author’s claims under articles 9 (para. 3), 7 and 14 of the Covenant. 5.5 The author also submits copies of interviews with the former head of the SIZO No. 1, providing a detailed description of how death penalties are executed; the Minister of Internal Affairs, who states inter alia that domestic legislation has priority over “norms imported from elsewhere”; and a former judge of the Minsk Regional Court, who took part in the examination of her son’s case, and who describes the dependency of the judiciary on the orders received from the Office of the President. Issues and proceedings before the Committee The State party’s failure to cooperate and to respect the Committee’s request for interim measures 6.1 The Committee notes the State party’s submission: that there are no legal grounds for the consideration of the present communication in so far as it is registered in violation of articles 2 and 5 (para. 2 (b)) of the Optional Protocol, because the alleged victim did not present the communication himself and has failed to exhaust domestic remedies; that it has no obligations regarding the recognition of the Committee’s rules of procedure and its interpretation of the provisions of the Optional Protocol; and that it has no obligation to respect the Committee’s requests for interim measures. 6.2 The Committee recalls that article 39, paragraph 2, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights authorizes it to establish its own rules of procedure, which the States parties have agreed to recognize. The Committee further observes that, by adhering to the Optional Protocol, a State party to the Covenant recognizes the competence of the Human Rights Committee to receive and consider communications from individuals subject to its jurisdiction claiming to be victims of a violation of any of the rights set forth in the Covenant. 5 Implicit in a State’s adherence to the Optional Protocol is an undertaking to cooperate with the Committee in good faith so as to permit and enable it to consider such communications, and after examination to forward its views to the State party and to the 5 Preamble and art. 1 of the Optional Protocol. 7