CCPR/C/79/D/910/2000 Page 11 Appendix Individual opinion of Mr. Abdelfattah Amor with regard to the decision on admissibility of 5 April 2001 While sharing the conclusion of the Committee regarding the inadmissibility of the part of the communication relating to the author’s brother, I continue to have reservations about the admissibility of the rest of the communication. There are a number of legal reasons for this: 1. Article 5, paragraph 2 (b), of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that: “The Committee shall not consider any communication from an individual unless it has ascertained that the individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies. This shall not be the rule where the application of the remedies is unreasonably prolonged.” Point number one: the onus is on the Committee to satisfy itself that the individual has exhausted all domestic remedies. The Committee’s role in the case is to ascertain rather than to assess. The author’s allegations, unless they focus on an unreasonable delay in proceedings, insufficient explanations offered by the State party, or manifest inaccuracies or errors, are not such as to necessitate a change in the Committee’s role. Point number two: article 5, paragraph 2 (b), of the Optional Protocol is quite unambiguous and requires no interpretation. It is perfectly clear and restrictive. It is not necessary to go beyond the text to make sense of it, which would mean twisting it and changing its meaning and scope. Point number three: the sole exception to the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies concerns unreasonable delay in proceedings, which is clearly not applicable in the present instance. 2. It is undeniable that the sentencing of the author to five years’ imprisonment in 1986 was never appealed, either before the author’s pardon in January 1987 or at any time afterwards. In other words, from the standpoint of the criminal law, no remedy was ever explored, let alone applied. 3. From the standpoint of the civil law and an action to seek compensation, the author has never, either as a principal party or in any other capacity, gone to court to claim damages, with the result that his case has been referred to the Committee for the first time as an initial action. 4. The author could have referred the case to the Committee with effect from August 1988, the date on which the Optional Protocol came into force with respect to the State party. The fact that he has waited more than 11 years to take advantage of the new procedure available to him cannot fail to raise questions, including that of a possible abuse of the right of submission referred to in article 3 of the Optional Protocol. 5. The Committee lacks accurate, consistent and systematic evidence that would enable it to corroborate the author’s allegations about the State party’s judicial system as a whole, either as regards its criminal or its civil side. By basing its position on the general absence of