M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 81 that it is also established in its case-law (see paragraph 293 above) that any complaint that expulsion to another country will expose an individual to treatment prohibited by Article 3 of the Convention requires close and rigorous scrutiny and that, subject to a certain margin of appreciation left to the States, conformity with Article 13 requires that the competent body must be able to examine the substance of the complaint and afford proper reparation. 388. In the Court’s view, the requirement flowing from Article 13 that execution of the impugned measure be stayed cannot be considered as a subsidiary measure, that is, without regard being had to the requirements concerning the scope of the scrutiny. The contrary would amount to allowing the States to expel the individual concerned without having examined the complaints under Article 3 as rigorously as possible. 389. However, the extremely urgent procedure leads precisely to that result. The Government themselves explain that this procedure reduces the rights of the defence and the examination of the case to a minimum. The judgments of which the Court is aware (see paragraphs 144 and 148 above) confirm that the examination of the complaints under Article 3 carried out by certain divisions of the Aliens Appeals Board at the time of the applicant’s expulsion was not thorough. They limited their examination to verifying whether the persons concerned had produced concrete proof of the irreparable nature of the damage that might result from the alleged potential violation of Article 3, thereby increasing the burden of proof to such an extent as to hinder the examination on the merits of the alleged risk of a violation. Furthermore, even if the individuals concerned did attempt to add more material to their files along these lines after their interviews with the Aliens Office, the Aliens Appeals Board did not always take that material into account. The persons concerned were thus prevented from establishing the arguable nature of their complaints under Article 3 of the Convention. 390. The Court concludes that the procedure for applying for a stay of execution under the extremely urgent procedure does not meet the requirements of Article 13 of the Convention. 391. The fact that a few judgments, against the flow of the established case-law at the time, have suspended transfers to Greece (see paragraph 149 above) does not alter this finding as the suspensions were based not on an examination of the merits of the risk of a violation of Article 3 but rather on the Appeals Board’s finding that the Aliens Office had not given sufficient reasons for its decisions. 392. The Court further notes that the applicant also faced several practical obstacles in exercising the remedies relied on by the Government. It notes that his request for a stay of execution under the extremely urgent procedure was rejected on procedural grounds, namely his failure to appear. Contrary to what the Government suggest, however, the Court considers that in the circumstances of the case, this fact cannot be considered to reveal

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