A/HRC/25/60 72. To allow exceptions by the executive branch for purposes other than legal proceedings or to find other uses for their outcomes is plainly against the spirit of the Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other treaties and standards, against the obligation to prevent torture and other illtreatment and against the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. 73. The Special Rapporteur is of the opinion that the aim to prevent and discourage torture and other ill-treatment, by rendering their product useless in legal proceedings is one strong policy objective of the exclusionary rule. If executive agencies are free to use information obtained by torture or other ill-treatment for other purposes, this constitutes an incentive to torture or ill-treatment in clear contradiction to the object and purpose of the absolute prohibition of such acts, including during interrogation. There is a clear affirmative obligation to prevent torture and ill-treatment that includes actions the State takes in its own jurisdiction to prevent torture or other ill-treatment in another jurisdiction. Thus, an interpretation focused on the objective of the norm demands that the collecting, sharing and receiving of tainted information be banned, because otherwise the purpose of preventing and discouraging torture and other ill-treatment is negated. It is not sufficient to ensure that the judicial process is free from the taint of torture; torture must not be encouraged, condoned, or acquiesced in all manifestations of public power, executive and judicial. 74. Therefore, the standards of the exclusionary rule should be interpreted in good faith and applied by way of analogy to the collecting, sharing and receiving of torturetainted information, including information obtained by other ill-treatment, even if not used in “proceedings” narrowly defined. 75. Governments cannot condemn the evil of torture and other ill-treatment at the international level while condoning it at the national level. It is hypocritical of States to condemn torture committed by others while accepting its products. Any use of torture-tainted information, even if the torture has been committed by agents of another State, is an act of acquiescence in torture that compromises the user State’s responsibility and leads to individual and State complicity in acts of torture. Complicity in torture is a direct breach of international human rights obligations under the Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, other human right and international humanitarian law treaties as well as under customary international law and according to the general principles of State Responsibility for internationally wrongful acts. 76. The collection, sharing and receiving of information with States where there is a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment suffice to demonstrate State responsibility through complicity. States have to assess the situation and the possible real risk of acts of torture or other ill-treatment and must refrain from “automatic reliance” on the information from intelligence services of other countries, which is incompatible with the object and purpose of the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and the obligation to prevent and discourage torture and other ill-treatment.58 77. This applies in particular to situations of systematic torture where the State cannot avoid knowledge or imputed knowledge of the real risk of such acts and other situations in case it cannot be established that there is no such risk. In cases of systematic torture, the receiving State must presume that the information is a product of torture and therefore refrain from collecting, sharing or receiving such tainted 58 18 See e.g. CAT/C/DEU/CO/5, para. 31; CAT/C/DEU/QPR/6, para. 38