A/HRC/19/61/Add.2 simply fabricated, often by obtaining confession under duress, to which false evidence is then added. 5. Impunity and lack of effective investigation of torture allegations 53. According to the Prosecutor General, more than 5,000 criminal investigations were opened into crimes relating to the events of June 2010 by an interdepartmental investigative working group under the Prosecutor General’s Office, comprising police and security bodies. Many cases were, however, terminated owing to lack of evidence. This put a strain on reportedly ill-prepared police and investigative bodies, institutionally prone to use torture and ill-treatment against detainees to compensate for an embedded lack of investigative capacity. For that difficult task, it counted only on police operatives and investigating officers as well as national security agents, all of whom had long been associated with allegations of extraction of confessions under torture and ill-treatment. Such bodies are notoriously unable to complete criminal investigations and deliver results in complex cases in ways that uphold the rule of law and thereby re-establish the trust of citizens in State institutions. Perhaps inevitably, the investigative efforts of the criminal justice process brought about an unprecedented scale of legally suspect convictions and triggered further violations, including denial of due process guarantees. This was carried out against a backdrop of existing concerns over independence and impartiality of the judicial oversight. There is also alarming evidence that many criminal proceedings were marred by widely reported bias against members of certain ethnic minorities.11 54. According to information provided by the Prosecutor General’s Office, as at December 2011, there have been no convictions for torture and very few prosecutions (if any) since article 305-1 was introduced into the Criminal Code in 2003. In 2010, the Office received a total of 251 complaints regarding abuse of power, including with use of violence (art. 305), and 14 complaints regarding torture (art. 305-1). Only six criminal cases were launched concerning torture complaints, of which five cases were sent to court; the other eight cases were dismissed. In 2010, three people were subjected to disciplinary measures. During the first nine months of 2011, the Office received 200 complaints regarding abuse of power and 31 complaints of torture, of which 13 criminal investigations were launched and 18 cases dismissed. During the same period, 36 people were punished with disciplinary measures. In 2011, for the first time, five police officers were convicted of abuse of power and received suspended sentences. According to the Ministry of the Interior, during the first 10 months of 2011, eight criminal cases were initiated against police officers by the Ministry; only two of those cases were submitted to court, and no decision had yet been reached at the time of the visit. 55. The Special Rapporteur expresses his concern that serious human rights violations committed in the context of ongoing investigations into the events of June 2010 and after have continued unabated in recent months. There is a serious lack of sufficiently speedy, thorough and impartial investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment, as well as a lack of prosecution of alleged law enforcement officials. The efforts made by the interim Government to investigate and punish the abuses that resulted from the events of June 2010 have proved to be largely ineffective. 56. The Special Rapporteur received credible reports according to which official replies of prosecutors do not usually contain information on how the decision not to initiate a criminal investigation was reached. It is reported that preliminary inquiries have been frequently inadequate as prosecutors fail to take all possible steps to verify allegations of torture. In several cases, prosecutors relied on inconclusive forensic examinations to decide 11 14 See A/HRC/17/41.