00038? exercise of the presidential prerogative of mercy..., the first and seventh applicants, in addition to the claims made by everyone else, are also challenging the legality of their sentences imposed on them for armed robbery"; and the Court concludes that it "will proceed to deal with these allegations seriatim 9. "7. However, admissibility does not apply to "allegations" but to the requirements of the format of the application. As stated in Rule 40 of the Rules of the Court, entitled "Conditions for Admissibility of Applications ", for the application to be considered, it must "be filed after exhausting local remedies, if any [...] ". The question is therefore whether the Applicants, before bringing the case before the African Court, have made use (or at least aftempted to make use of) what domestic law provides them with as a judicial means of asserting their rights. 10. Carrying on with its reasoning, the Court states "in relation to the alleged violation of the Applicants' rights by reason of the exercise of the presidential prerogative of mercy, the Court notes that the Applicants do not dispute that the avenue offered by the Basic Rights and Duties Enforcement Act was available to them whereby they could have challenged, before the High Court, the alleged violation of their rights"8. ln so doing, the Court suggests that it is ruling on the merits of the case. 11.ln the following paragraphs, the Court revisits the issue of exhaustion of local remedies, first recalling its case law in Couple Diakitd v. Republic of MalF, and further noting that "[t]he Applicants could have approached the High court[...] lt was not open to the Applicants to offiandedly dismiss the remedies available within the Respondent State without attempting to activate them"70, and then concluding that " in light of the above, the Court finds that the Application, in so far as it relates to all the Applicants and their allegation of a violation of their rights due to the exercise of the presidential prerogative of mercy, is inadmissible, for failure to fulfil the requirement under Article 56(5) of the Charter which is restated in Rule 40(5) of the 7 8 Paragraph 48 ofthe Judgment (underscored by the author). Paragraphe 49. e "the exhaustion of local remedies is a requirement of international law and not a matter of choice and it is incumbent on the complainant to take all necessary measures to exhaust or at least attempt to exhaust local remedies; it was not enough for the complainant to question the effectiveness of the State's domestic remedies because of isolated incidents". Paragraph 51 1o 3