CCPR/C/95/D/1334/2004 Page 7 alleged violations of article 6 of the Law “On Mass Media”. The basis for its holding, instead, was that there were shortcomings in the re-registration application: specifically, that the date of the newspaper’s statute did not correspond with the date of its adoption; four pages of “Simo”’s statutes were missing; and the surname of “Simo”’s director was inaccurate. 2.12 Mr. Mavlonov appealed to the Samarkand Regional Civil Court, which delivered its judgment on 28 June 2002, affirming the decision of the inter-district court. After repeating the technical requirements for registration as set forth in Resolution No. 160 at paragraph 4, the court wrote: ‘Based on these Regulation requirements and the law “On Mass Media”, the newspaper’s activity was not compliant with its aims and was contrary to the law, which was correctly mentioned’ by the Press Department in its decision. At another point, the court wrote that it ‘also takes into consideration the financial situation of [“Simo”]’. 2.13 Before proceeding with further appeals, on 20 August 2002, Mr. Mavlonov submitted another application for “Oina’s” re-registration to the Press Department with “Simo” as founder, which was rejected on 20 September 2002. A letter from the Press Department stated that the grounds for refusal were the poor financial situation of the paper, as well as the fact that no changes had been made to the aims and objectives contained in the newspaper’s statutes. However, these had not hitherto been the subject of adverse comments, either from the Press Department or the courts. Earlier, they had only alleged that “Oina’s” aims and objectives were not consistent with its statutes. 2.14 Mr. Mavlonov then appealed for supervisory review to the President of the Samarkand Regional Court, and the Supreme Court, which dismissed his appeals on 5 November 2002 and 2 May 2003, respectively; further attempts to seek review in the Supreme Court were dismissed, most recently on 23 September 2004. Mr. Mavlonov concluded that further requests to the Supreme Court would be futile, and that, therefore, all domestic remedies had been exhausted. The case of Mr. Sa’di 3.1 The other author, Mr. Sa’di, a member of the country’s Tajik ethnic minority and a regular “Oina” reader, does not presently have, nor has he ever had, any practical possibility of challenging the denial of “Oina’s” re-registration application in the courts. He could not have joined with “Oina” in the original suit, because the civil court system denied jurisdiction of the case and sent it to the economic courts, where he, as a reader, had no standing to sue. By the time the case was sent back to the civil court system, eight months had passed. There had been no coverage of the litigation by the media, and so Mr. Sa’di had no way of knowing that a civil case was being initiated. Consequently, he had no reasonable opportunity to participate in the civil litigation at that point. Once he had missed the opportunity to participate at the trial level, he was barred from participating in any of the appellate proceedings. Nor could Mr. Sa’di have litigated the issues thereafter on his own behalf, having been unable to join “Oina” in the original suit, because of the combination of articles 60 and 100 of the Civil Procedure Code, whose effect was to make the decision of the courts regarding the issue of “Oina’s” re-registration final as to Mr. Sa’di. The only other hypothetical possibility for him would have been to seek a finding that the registration regime itself was unconstitutional. However, only the Constitutional Court has the jurisdiction to decide regarding the constitutionality of laws; and Mr. Sa’di, as an ordinary citizen, has no standing before this court.