A/64/215 at the twenty-first congress of the International Academy of Legal Medicine in Lisbon. 30. On 10 June, the Special Rapporteur participated in a panel discussion on “Human rights violations after 9/11: a debate about accountability”, organized by the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the American University Washington College of Law, in Washington, D.C. 31. On 25 June, the Special Rapporteur delivered the keynote speech at the conference on “The role of the legal profession in combating torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, organized by Avocats sans frontières in Brussels. Meetings in relation to particular countries 32. On 24 February 2009, the Special Rapporteur held several meetings with representatives from the United States State Department and Congress, inter alia, to discuss the latest developments relating to the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities. 33. While in Geneva between 9 and 13 March 2009, the Special Rapporteur met with the Ambassadors of Uruguay, Cuba, the Republic of Moldova and Jamaica, with the Chargé d’affaires of the Permanent Missions of Kazakhstan and the United States, with members of Government delegations from Indonesia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, with representatives from the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation, with staff from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and with a number of civil society partners of the mandate. 34. On 18 May 2009, the Special Rapporteur met with the Permanent Representative of Zimbabwe to the United Nations in Geneva to discuss dates for his country visit. 35. On 9 June, the Special Rapporteur held meetings with members of the United States Congress from both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to follow up on his earlier efforts in relation to the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities and other issues related to the fight against terrorism. 36. From 29 June to 3 July, the Special Rapporteur participated in the sixteenth annual meeting of special rapporteurs, representatives, independent experts and chairpersons of working groups of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. 37. On 3 July 2009, the Special Rapporteur met with representatives of the Permanent Mission of Cuba to discuss dates for his forthcoming mission. III. Conditions of detention A. Detainees: out of sight, out of mind 38. Since torture normally takes place behind closed doors, the Special Rapporteur spends much of his country missions in closed institutions, such as prisons, pretrial detention facilities, police and military lock-ups, psychiatric hospitals and special places of detention for children and juveniles, aliens and other groups. 1 In these __________________ 1 8 The collective term for such places for the purposes of the present paper will be “places of detention”. 09-43792