CAT/C/58/D/682/2015 1.2 In accordance with article 22 (3) of the Convention, the Committee brought the complaint to the State party’s attention on 28 May 2015. At the same time, in application of rule 114 (1) of its rules of procedure, the Committee asked the State party not to extradite Mr. Alhaj Ali to Saudi Arabia while the complaint was being considered. 1.3 On 6 July 2015, the State party informed the Committee that it had “taken the necessary steps to stay the enforcement of the extradition order against Abdul Rahman Alhaj Ali”. 1.4 On 3 October 2015, the State party reiterated that the competent authorities had decided to stay the enforcement of the order to hand over the individual concerned to Saudi Arabia until the Committee had issued a decision on the merits of the case. Noting that Mr. Alhaj Ali had been in pretrial detention that was “prejudicial to his rights” for more than a year,1 and given the lack of legal provisions allowing the detention order to be lifted, the State party requested the Committee to expedite the issuance of a decision on the case. The facts as submitted by the complainant 2.1 At 8.30 p.m. on 30 October 2014, Mr. Alhaj Ali was arrested by plain-clothes Moroccan police officers at a café near his home in Kenitra. According to Mr. Alhaj Ali, after being taken to the Kenitra office of the Directorate-General of National Security, he was ill-treated and humiliated by police officers. On arrival at the office, he was dragged through the corridors by the neck, and was surprised to see his former Saudi sponsor (kafil), with whom he had had a conflict of interest when he lived in Saudi Arabia. In the presence of the police officers, his former sponsor insulted him and threatened him with death and the worst kind of torture if he returned to Saudi Arabia. 2.2 Upon being informed of her husband’s arrest, the complainant went to the police station and asked to see him, but her request was denied. 2.3 Mr. Alhaj Ali was placed in custody at the police station in Kenitra. The following day, he was brought before the Crown Prosecutor of the Court of First Instance in Kenitra, who informed him that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant and that he was being sought by Saudi Arabia for embezzling the amount of 544,192 Saudi riyals. Mr. Alhaj Ali said that he had committed no such offence; he had simply been the owner of a company in Saudi Arabia since 2007. Under Saudi immigration law, he had had to register the company and all its assets in the name of his Saudi sponsor. He also said that, when he left Saudi Arabia, his sponsor had signed a certificate attesting that Mr. Alhaj Ali owed him nothing and had no obligations towards him. 2.4 Despite clear evidence of his accuser’s bad faith, the Crown Prosecutor ordered the victim to be held in pretrial detention at Salé prison until the Court of Cassation reached a formal decision on extradition. Accordingly, Mr. Alhaj Ali was placed in detention pending extradition at Salé prison. In early December 2014, he was brought before the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation in Rabat for a ruling on the extradition request. The hearing was postponed, however, because his lawyer was not present. 2.5 On 31 December 2014, during the rescheduled hearing, his defence raised the issue of double jeopardy, or the ne bis in idem principle, in limine litis, as he had already been convicted of the same offence in the Syrian Arab Republic and had served his sentence in 2007. Nevertheless, after the hearing, the Court of Cassation ruled in favour of extradition and rejected the defence’s arguments, on the grounds that the judgment delivered by the Syrian court did not refer specifically to the acts for which Mr. Alhaj Ali was being prosecuted in Saudi Arabia, even though the proceedings in the Syrian Arab Republic were 1 2 [Around 21 months at the time of the Committee’s decision.] GE.16-15793