E/CN.4/1995/34/Add.1 page 6 Mr. Sergei Kovalev; the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Mr. Pyotr Mischenkov; the Deputy Head of the Moscow Police, General Viktor Kononov; and the Deputy at the Office of the Procurator General, Mr. Yuri Sherbanenko. The Special Rapporteur also had informal discussions with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Sergei Lavrov, who hosted a luncheon for the Special Rapporteur. 13. In St. Petersburg, the Special Rapporteur met with the First Deputy at the Ministry of the Interior, Mr. Nikolai Gorbachevsky. He also held discussions with Colonel Vladimir Spitznadel, the Deputy Head of Police and Head of Services of Corrections and Social Rehabilitation, who coordinated, and accompanied the Special Rapporteur during the visit to St. Petersburg, Mr. Yuli Andreevitch Ribakov, a member of the State Duma from St. Petersburg, escorted the Special Rapporteur during much of his visit there. 14. The Special Rapporteur also visited places of detention in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Moscow he visited the following locations: Butyrskaya and Matrosskaya Tishnina No. 1, the two large remand centres for the city of Moscow; the IVS at Petrovka 38, the headquarters of the Moscow Police, and at police station No. 11; and City Hospital No. 20 where seriously ill or injured detainees are taken to receive medical care. In St. Petersburg the Special Rapporteur visited the following locations: the remand centres Kresty and Lebedeva; the IVS at a Leningrad district police station; a strict regime colony approximately 30 kilometres outside St. Petersburg in Fornosovo; and a juvenile re-educational and labour colony in Kolpino. 15. Within each of these detention centres the Special Rapporteur was able to interview and receive testimony from detainees. It must be recorded, however, that the Special Rapporteur was denied permission to speak in private with detainees in the pre-trial detention centres due to a Russian law which prohibits a pre-trial detainee from discussing his or her case with anyone other than the investigator, an official of the Ministry of the Interior or the Office of the Procurator, or his or her attorney. As a result, all interviews with remand prisoners in pre-trial detention centres took place in the presence of an official of the Ministry of the Interior. The Special Rapporteur notes that the presence of this official may have deterred, and indeed appeared to deter, the detainees from speaking freely about possible abuses on the part of the police, prison staff, investigators or procurators. 16. The Special Rapporteur would like to emphasize that the Russian authorities made every effort to make his visit public and transparent. To this end, they initiated media coverage of his visit. In particular, the Department of International Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights arranged for the Special Rapporteur’s interview with a St. Petersburg TV station and his live interview with the radio station Echo of Moscow. On the final day of his visit, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs arranged a press conference in the press centre of the Ministry, which was covered by national television and attended by Russian and foreign journalists as well as representatives of Russian NGOs. 17. In addition to meetings with government officials and visits to detention centres, the Special Rapporteur also met and held discussions with representatives of several non-governmental human rights organizations. In particular, he held lengthy discussions with the Director of the Moscow