E/CN.4/1996/35/Add.1 page 14 Haffs); and ’Abd al-Hussein Hussein Ma’raj Mal Allah, (arrested 2 July 1995 in Nuwaidrat). Each of these persons was allegedly beaten in front of their families upon arrest. The whereabouts of the detainees were unknown. Follow-up of cases transmitted previously 55. On 12 December 1994 the Special Rapporteur transmitted an urgent appeal on behalf of Al-Shaikh ’Ali Salman and Ibrahim Hassan, who had been arrested on 5 December and were held at Al-Qala prison, reportedly after signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of the parliament. On 26 April 1995, the Government informed the Special Rapporteur that the two men had been arrested on charges relating to the assault of participants in a national charity marathon event on 25 November 1994, not for their signing of a petition. They had been treated humanely and had received medical attention. Ali Salman was released on 18 January 1995 and appeared publicly at a press conference in London shortly thereafter. Ibrahim Hassan remained in custody pending trial. Bangladesh Information transmitted to the Government 56. By letter dated 29 May 1995 the Special Rapporteur informed the Government that he had received information according to which local village arbitration councils, known as salish, had convicted and sentenced a number of persons to public flogging or death. The salish were said to be traditional institutions without legal standing established on an ad hoc basis for the purposes of dispute resolution. The defendants appearing before the salish were almost always women whose behaviour did not conform to religious or socially accepted norms. Local clerics play a primary role in the salish and apply Shari’a law, often in contravention to the civil law comprising the Bangladesh Penal Code. The salish reportedly operate with little interference from legally established official institutions. 57. The Special Rapporteur transmitted two cases in which sentences pronounced by a salish amounting to torture or ill-treatment had reportedly been carried out and in which prosecutions were undertaken against those responsible for the alleged abuses. Nurjahan, reportedly sentenced by a village salish in Chatakchara village, Sylhet district in January 1993 to be stoned publicly 101 times, died a few hours after being partially buried in the ground and pelted with stones by villagers. Although her parents maintained that she had in fact survived the stoning, but had committed suicide from shame, it was alleged that they may have been pressured to make that assertion. On 22 February 1994, a district magistrate’s court in Moulvibazar sentenced the village headman, the imam of the village mosque and seven other village elders who had participated in the salish to seven years’ imprisonment and a fine. An appeal against the sentence was reportedly pending. Another woman, also named Nurjahan, was allegedly burned at the stake on 5 May 1993 after she was found guilty of adultery by a salish. The District and Sessions Court judge in Faridpur acquitted those accused of her killing on 22 June 1994 for lack of evidence. This result was under appeal. The Special Rapporteur requested that the Government keep him apprised on developments in these two cases.