3.3 He further claims that there has been a violation of article 14 of the Convention, since the pardoning of the Civil Guards is tantamount to denying the fact of the complainant’s torture and suffering. According to the complainant, the State party should have redressed the wrong he had suffered as a victim of torture and taken steps to ensure that such acts did not happen again. He adds that the pardon accorded to the torturers encourages the practice of torture within the Civil Guard. According to the complainant, remedial measures cover all the damages suffered by the victim, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, as well as prevention, investigation and punishment of the persons responsible. In this regard, he cites the studies carried out by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on the impunity of perpetrators of violations of human rights and on the right to restitution, compensation and rehabilitation for victims of grave violations of human rights, as well as the judgement of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras. 3.4 The complainant believes that systematic practice in the State party, exemplified by failure to investigate cases of torture promptly and impartially, protracted investigations, the imposition of minimum sentences, the retention in the security bodies of persons accused of torture and the promotion, decoration and pardoning of persons accused of torture, allows torture to go unpunished. He refers to the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee with reference to the second, third and fourth periodic reports submitted by the State party, in which it expressed concern at the lenient sentences imposed on persons accused of torture and recommended that the State party impose appropriate punishments. State party’s observations on the admissibility and merits of the complaint 4.1 The State party considers the complaint inadmissible because it says that the complainant has failed to exhaust domestic remedies. It argues that the complainant should have appealed against the royal decrees of 1999 that granted the pardons. It states that both the Supreme Court and the Court of Jurisdictional Disputes have held that a pardon may be subject to judicial review. It adds that the Convention against Torture has been incorporated into domestic law and may be invoked directly before the courts and, if the complainant maintains that granting pardons violates the Convention, he should have put this argument to the Spanish courts. 4.2 As to the merits, the State party maintains that the victim of a crime has no right to block a pardon, the granting of which is a prerogative of the King acting in accordance with the Constitution. It claims that, according to the position adopted by the human rights treaty bodies, victims have no right to ask for anyone to be convicted, and accordingly it would be a contradiction to grant them the right to block a pardon. When a crime is investigated ex officio, the granting of a pardon does not provide for the victim’s involvement and, therefore, the interests of the victim of the crime are unaffected. The State party adds that it was the Civil Guards themselves who requested the pardon. 4.3 The State party claims that the complainant received the full compensation awarded to him by the court. 4.4 The State party indicates that, until such time as a guilty verdict was handed down in the complainant’s case, the accused went about their business as normal, which included one of them taking a course of studies with a view to promotion, as anyone is legally entitled to do in the absence of measures affecting their rights. Upon conviction, the Civil Guards lodged an 149