82. Article 56(2) requires that the Communication must be compatible with the
Charter of the 0/ AU or the African Charter. The Complainant relies on
previous jurisprudence of the Commission in in Mgwanga et al. v Cameroon
which unpacks this provision as having three requirements, namely 1) it must
be brought against a State Party to the Charter by someone who is competent to
do so, 2) that the violation complained of should have occurred or continued
after ratification of the Charter by the State and 3) that the Communication must
allege prirna facie violations. The Complainant provides justification for why he
has complied with the first two requirements in paragraphs 33 and 34 above. In
relation to the submission that there was a prima facie violation, he set out the
rights purported to have been violated and the actions which constituted these
violations, and noted that the Commission had already found under the seizure
phase that there was a prima facie violation.
83. The Respondent State on the other hand maintains that the arrest was carried
out in accordance with due process of the law and that the allegations of
maltreatment during detention were unsubstantiated, and therefore that these
do not amount to primn facie violations. The Commission reconfirms the three
requirements under Article 56(2) as set out in Mgwanga et al. v Cameroon and
notes that the Respondent State had not contested the first two requirements.
On the facts, the Commission agrees that these first two requirements were met.
84. In relation to the third requirement, namely that there must be a prima Jacie
violation, the Commission has held in a number of cases that prima Jacie
violation of the provisions of the Charter is said to have occurred 11when the
facts presented in the Complaint show that a human rights violation has likely
occurred11 •17 The Commission has further held that a failure to "show a link
between the Articles of the African Charter allegedly violated and the account
of act or situation complained of" would result in a failure to prove a prima facie
violation,18 and that stating an allegation in a general manner is not enough. 19
In Nixon Nyikadzino (represented by Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum) v.
Zimbabwe the Commission further held that because the Complainant
"succinctly narrates how the Victim allegedly suffered", "tries to show how the
alleged acts of the Respondent State violate Articles [of the Charter]," and