United Nations Human Rights Website - Treaty Bodies Database - Document - Sessional/Annual Report of Committee - or at the instigation of or with the consent of a public official (delictum proprium) with the special intent to extract a confession or other information, to arbitrarily punish, to intimidate, to coerce or to discriminate; (b) the need to legislate for complicity in torture and attempts to commit torture as equally punishable; (c) the need to exclude the legal applicability of all justification in cases of torture; (d) the need to exclude procedurally all evidence obtained by torture in criminal and all other proceedings except in proceedings against the perpetrator of torture himself; and (e) the need to legislate for and enforce prompt and impartial investigation into any substantiated allegations of torture. 242. Namibia should enact laws, particularly prohibiting torture, as required under the Convention against Torture and other human rights agreements binding on Namibia, in fields that are not yet regulated. Existing national laws should be further reviewed in the light of the Convention and protection of human rights in general. 243. Education of members of the Police Department, the National Defence Force, the Prisons Service, other law enforcement personnel and medical officers regarding the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment should be fully included in their training, in accordance with article 10 of the Convention, with special emphasis on the definition of torture as contained in article 1 of the Convention and also emphasizing the criminal liability of those who commit acts of torture. 244. Independent governmental bodies consisting of persons of high moral standing should be appointed to take over the inspection of detention centres and places of imprisonment. The Government should also establish an independent authority to deal with complaints against members of the Police Department. 245. The Government should introduce measures to reduce the accumulation of criminal cases resulting in long and illegal pre-trial detention, which violates the right of defendants to be tried within a reasonable time. 246. The Government should provide the Office of the Ombudsman with the personnel and financial means to exercise its functions in the field of protection of human rights, as foreseen by the Namibian Constitution. 247. The Committee recommends that the specific allegations of ill-treatment which have been brought to its attention be investigated and that the results of such investigations be transmitted to the Committee. The Committee also recommends that the cases of disappearance of former members of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) be, according to article 12 of the Convention, promptly and impartially investigated. In all situations where reasonable grounds exist to believe that those disappearances amounted either to torture or to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, the dependants of the deceased victims should, according to article 14 of the Convention, be afforded fair and adequate compensation. The perpetrators of those acts should be brought to justice. 248. Traditional leaders in community courts in Namibia should either be effectively made to comply with the legal limits of their power to order pre-trial detainment of suspects or they should be stripped of their power to order such pre-trial detention. http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/de75e94f920bd0a0802565a600537744?Opendocument (39 of 109)16/10/2006 9:54:12 AM