CAT/C/48/D/453/2011 torture and ill-treatment and found that no crime had been committed and, moreover, that the complainant’s self-incriminating statements were corroborated by evidence presented during the investigative stage of proceedings and before the National High Court itself, which included, in particular, testimony by: the police officers who took part in his questioning at the police station; the complainant’s assigned counsel; the forensic doctor who examined him; the ETA member and co-defendant who had confirmed that he knew the complainant; and Judge Lidón Corbi’s widow. The Court found no irregularity in the application of Organic Law No. 19/1994 and noted that the police witnesses had testified at the behest of the Public Prosecution Service with provisional identification numbers provided by the police for the purpose of the examination of the police report by the court and in line with the National High Court’s assent to legal protection measures designed to safeguard their right to life. According to the decision, the complainant’s defence counsel exercised the right to question witnesses in a normal fashion and recognized the validity of the report prepared by the Basque autonomous police, which showed that the complainant’s statement was supported by circumstantial evidence. 2.20 Two members of the Supreme Court expressed dissenting opinions. The first questioned the acceptability as admissible evidence of self-incriminating statements contained in a police report and verified neither during court proceedings nor when evidence is heard. It pointed out that statements taken in police stations could not be submitted in court in the form of depositions by the police officers who had taken those statements, because that infringed the right of the accused not to testify against him or herself or to remain silent. It stated that police officers may not speak for the person who made the statement if that person is present in court. The opinion concluded that selfincriminating statements made legally in a police station by a person facing charges can and must be investigated and that the information obtained may be treated as a source of evidence, without being taken as probative of the facts being judged. The second dissenting opinion also concluded that statements made to the police by the accused may not be submitted in court as testimony by the police officers who took them. Such testimony must not be treated as incriminating evidence, but solely as evidence of information and facts witnessed by those officers, such as the fact that the confession took place and the circumstances in which the statement was made. 2.21 The complainant filed an application for amparo before the Constitutional Court contesting the decision of the Supreme Court. On 31 March 2008, the Constitutional Court ruled the application inadmissible because it manifestly lacked content that would justify a decision on the merits. The complaint 3.1 The complainant alleges that the State party violated article 12, read in conjunction with article 16, of the Convention. The reaction of the courts to his claim of having been subjected to torture and ill-treatment was unsatisfactory. A prompt, independent and impartial investigation was not carried out. The competent courts failed utterly to act on his repeated claims of having been subjected to ill-treatment and torture while held incommunicado, thereby making it impossible to shed light on the reported incidents, and dismissed his complaint without investigation. Similarly, the examining magistrate of the National High Court failed to order an investigation into his allegations of having been subjected to ill-treatment and torture while he was held incommunicado. The regime of incommunicado detention for five days, extendable by a further eight days, permitted under the law of the State party has been criticized repeatedly by the Committee against Torture,6 6 GE.12-43762 The complainant refers to the Committee’s concluding observations on the fourth and fifth periodic 7