said law with the treaties ratified by Senegal. The Council considered that: • "...Article 74 of the Constitution grants the Constitutional Council competence to pronounce solely on the conformity to the Constitution, of laws referred to it for consideration;[/quote] • ...under the terms of Article 98 of the Constitution, 'the Conventions or Agreements lawfully ratified or approved have, from their date of publication, competence higher than that of the laws, subject to, for each Convention or Treaty, its application by the other Party"; • that these provisions neither prescribe nor entail the checking of the conventionality of the laws within the framework of pronouncement on the conformity of laws with the Constitution as provided for in Article 74 of the said Constitution; • ...that it is beyond the competence of the Constitutional Council to assess the conformity of the law with the provisions of an international Convention or Treaty;" 23. The Respondent State considers further that to claim, as the Complainants have done, "that in promulgating the amnesty law 'Ezzan' passed by National Representation on the 4th January 2005, the President of the Republic of Senegal had allowed the entry into force of a law which violates the above-mentioned article (of the Charter) >. 24. In its oral submission before the [African] Commission during the 40th Session, the Respondent State had re-affirmed that the law as promulgated by the President of the Republic after verification of its conformity with the Constitution had not been subjected to any jurisdictional appeal, and the absence of real and identifiable victims makes such an appeal improbable. The [Respondent] State also recalled that the ruling of the Constitutional Council does not prevent future victims from seizing the competent courts to demand redress for any damage they may have suffered. 25. Furthermore, the State clarified the procedure to be adopted before the Constitutional Council. The Council can be seized through action (before the promulgation of a law) and by exception (after the promulgation of a law). Through action, only the President of the Republic and one tenth of the Members of the National Assembly can challenge a law adopted by the National Assembly before the Constitutional Council. Through exception, any citizen, during a proceeding to which he is a party before the National Council or the Appeals Court, can challenge the unconstitutionality of a law. In such as case, the National Council or the Appeals Court defers the judgment and seizes the Constitutional Council which first of all has to rule on the constitutionality of the said law. 26. The Respondent State further withdrew its submission on the use of insulting language by the Complainants. 27. The State of Senegal prays the African Commission to declare communication 304/05 inadmissible. Comments by the complainants on the memorandum of the State on admissibility 28. The Complainant NGOs first of all challenge the admissibility of the submission of the State on the grounds that it had not been submitted within the three months deadline given to the State by the [African] Commission. 29. The Complainants then go on to refute, one by one, the arguments of inadmissibility raised by the Respondent State. Thus, with regard to the compatibility with the [African] Charter, they contend, using the jurisprudence of the African Commission as basis, notably its decision on communication 245/2002 Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum/Zimbabwe that to be compatible with the [African] Charter, the communication has only got to invoke the provisions of the law which are presumed to have been violated, and that from then on it is "up to the African Commission, after having considered all the facts at its disposal, to make a ruling on the rights which have been violated and to recommend the appropriate remedy to restitute the rights of the Complainant". According to them, communication 304/05 attempts to denounce the impunity sanctioned by the amnesty law known as 'Ezzan' by making it impossible for the perpetrators of crimes to be brought to justice in blatant violation of Article 7(1)(a) of the [African] Charter. 30. The complainants also assert that the simple fact of declaring that a State Party has violated a provision of the [African] Charter can hardly constitute, on its own, an 'insulting' remark, and that "to admit that such an allegation is insulting would result in challenging the principle itself of resorting to the Commission for a remedy". 31. The Complainant also denies having based its communication on "potential or hypothetical" facts, or limiting itself "to simple declarations by re-echoing the artificial opinions of the political opposition", as is 3