authorization to reside in France. The request was rejected by the Prefect of Haute-Vienne on 3 July 1998 on the grounds that the author did not satisfy the conditions for benefiting under any of the provisions of the circular. More particularly, he had not furnished sufficient evidence of his personal situation to demonstrate that returning him to his home country would put him at serious risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. He was therefore given one month in which to leave French territory. The Minister of the Interior rejected the author's appeal against the Prefect's ruling on 16 December 1998. 2.11 K.N's counsel asserts that the author is utterly without rights; he has no legal means of regularizing his situation, no resources and no entitlement to housing, social security, employment, etc. He is living in hiding, receiving occasional help from people who feed and shelter him, and may be discovered and expelled at any moment. The complaint 3.1 The author considers himself to be at risk of being arrested and tortured if he is returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, even though the present regime is not the same as the one that was in power when he left the country: he is known to the security service, where some old hands still have influence. His forcible return would thus be in breach of article 3 of the Convention. 3.2 The author has submitted to the Committee a copy of a letter posted in Kinshasa on 16 June 1995 telling him that his wife's dead body had been found, headless, while he was still in prison in Zaire.d According to the letter, his family does not know whether the discovery and the author's arrest are connected. The author also asserts that his daughter was abducted in November 1997 and held for several days at a secret location, but he provides no details of the persons responsible or the circumstances in which the abduction allegedly took place. State party's observations on admissibility 4.1 By letter dated 20 April 1999, the State party challenges the admissibility of the communication. It argues non-exhaustion of the domestic remedies available to the applicant, both during the proceedings leading up to his expulsion to Kinshasa in March 1994 and since his return to France in 1995. It also disputes the author's claim to be a victim. A. Proceedings leading up to author's deportation in 1994 4.2 By judgement dated 14 March 1994, the Paris Correctional Court banned the author from French territory for three years and ordered provisional execution of its sentence. The author, who was deported on 20 March 1994, entered no appeal against that judgement, although he had 10 days in which to do so by virtue of articles 496, 497 and 498 of the Code of Penal Procedure. 4.3 It is true that the judgement was for immediate enforcement and that the author was liable to be deported at any time, even before the 10 days had elapsed. There was, however, nothing to prevent K.N. from availing himself of this judicial remedy so as to have his case reviewed by the Court of Appeal. d Photographs of the body are annexed to the communication. 168