CAT/C/23/D/60/1996 page 18 - In October 1991, the State party received allegations that Faisal Baraket died as a result of torture from the following non-governmental organizations: Amnesty International, World Organization against Torture, Action of Christians for the Abolition of Torture (France) and Association for the Prevention of Torture (Switzerland). - On 13 July 1992, a report prepared by the Higher Committee for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, an official Tunisian body, had considered Faisal Baraket’s death to be suspicious and had suggested that an inquiry should be begun under article 36 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. 11.5 However, only on 22 September 1992 was an inquiry ordered into these allegations of torture - over 10 months after the foreign non-governmental organizations had raised the alarm and over 2 months after the Driss Commission’s report. 11.6 In a similar case,5 the Committee had considered delays of three weeks and more than two months on the part of the competent authorities in reacting to allegations of torture to be excessive. 11.7 The Committee is of the view that the State party did not comply with its obligation under article 12 of the Convention to proceed to a “prompt ... investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction” and that there was consequently a violation of the Convention. 11.8 Concerning the investigation carried out by the competent authorities of the State party, the following acts may be regarded as having been established: - The examining magistrate, who was entrusted with the case by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on 22 September 1992, ordered a new medical evaluation, which found that it was impossible to determine the mechanism by which the lesions observed on the victim had arisen, or their origin, and dismissed the case. - Assigned the case once again, following communication No. 14/1994, the magistrate examined the persons mentioned by the author of the communication. However, as all these persons denied the slightest knowledge of the alleged events, the magistrate again dismissed the case. 11.9 The Committee notes in this regard that, among other things, the examining magistrate had at his disposal the results of other important investigations which are customarily conducted in such matters, but made no use of them: - First, notwithstanding the statements made by the witnesses mentioned, and in particular bearing in mind the possibility of incomplete recall, the magistrate could have checked in the records of the detention centres referred to whether there was any trace of the presence of Faisal Baraket during the period in question, as well as that, in the same detention centre and at the same time, of the two persons mentioned by the author of the communication as having been