CAT/C/42/D/261/2005 Page 9 both parties to a civil action – the plaintiff and the respondent alike – be identified by name, address and other relevant personal data. Since the complainant was unable to provide this information, instituting civil action for compensation would clearly have been procedurally impossible and would have been rejected by the civil court out of hand. The Complaint 3.1 The complainant submits that the State party has violated article 16, paragraph 1, read separately or in conjunction with articles 12 and 13; and article 14, read separately or in conjunction with article 16, paragraph 1, of the Convention. 3.2 With regard to exhaustion of domestic remedies, the complainant submits that international law does not require that a victim pursue more than one of a number of remedies which may be capable of redressing the violations alleged. Where there is a choice of effective and sufficient remedies, it is up to the complainant to select one. Thus, having unsuccessfully exhausted one remedy, a complainant "cannot be criticised for not having had recourse to legal remedies which would have been directed essentially to the same end and would in any case not have offered better chances of success”. 12 The complainant refers to the jurisprudence of the European Commission which held that where domestic law affords both civil and criminal remedies for treatment allegedly contrary to article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a complainant who initiated criminal proceedings against a police officer allegedly responsible need not also have filed a civil action for compensation.13 Moreover, the complainant submits that only a criminal remedy would be effective in the instant case; civil and/or administrative remedies do not provide sufficient redress. 3.3 The complainant claims that he was subjected to acts of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment by state officials, in violation of article 16. He submits that the assessment of the level of ill-treatment depends, inter alia, on the vulnerability of the victim and should thus also take into account the sex, age, state of health or ethnicity of the victim. The level of ill-treatment required to be "degrading" depends, in part, on the vulnerability of the victim to physical or emotional suffering. The complainant’s association with a minority group historically subjected to discrimination and prejudice14 renders the victim more vulnerable to illtreatment for the purposes of article 16, paragraph 1, particularly where, as in the Republic of Serbia, law enforcement bodies have consistently failed to address systematic patterns of violence and discrimination against Roma. He suggests that a “given level of physical abuse is 12 See A v. France, Judgment of 23 November 1993, Series A no. 277-B; Miailhe v. France, Judgment of 25 February 1993, Series A no. 256-C. 13 See Bethlen v. Hungary, Application 26692/95, admissibility decision of 10 April 1997. 14 Reference is made, inter alia, to the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s Concluding Observations on Serbia and Montenegro in 2004, Human Rights Watch’s World Report of 20032004, the International Helsinki Federation Annual Report on Serbia and Montenegro of 2004, Amnesty International’s report “Serbia and Montenegro: Amnesty International’s concerns in Serbia and Montenegro” of 2003, 2003 Global Survey on Forced Evictions of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 2003 report on human rights in Serbia and Montenegro of the Belgrade centre for Human Rights and the HLC’s report “Roma in Serbia (1998-2003)”.