CAT/C/23/D/93/1997
page 4
2.9
Being still banned from the country, the author had no alternative, if he wished to
regularize his situation, but to lodge a plea with the Ministry of Justice to set aside the judgement
of the Paris Correctional Court dated 14 March 1994. His plea was rejected on 16 October 1996.
2.10 Pursuant to the provisions of the ministerial circular dated 24 June 1997 on the review of
the situation of certain categories of aliens illegally present in the country, the author lodged a
request for exceptional 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.3 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,