A/HRC/34/54/Add.1 interpreting the letter of the law but of the attitude of prosecutors, investigative judges and court officials, who do not appear to take the issue seriously. 96. The Special Rapporteur strongly believes that it is the responsibility of prosecutors and investigative judges to establish whether anyone has been mistreated or not, even in the absence of a victim’s complaint. It is the State that ultimately carries the international legal obligation to prevent torture and ill-treatment, and it is imperative for Mauritania to prosecute public officials who order, condone or cover up torture in flagrant abuse of their superior authority, including in situations where they know or ought to know that torture was about to be, was being or had been committed. While the establishment of the national preventive mechanism is a very welcome addition to the institutional arsenal for combating torture, it does not absolve prosecutors and investigative judges from their responsibilities to investigate and prosecute all allegations of torture and ill-treatement. 5. Burden of proof and medical examinations 97. The carrying out of professional forensic examinations and documenting allegations of torture and ill-treatment, as well as deaths in custody, are important components of any effective investigation and prosecution. 98. The Mauritanian Code of Criminal Procedure guarantees the right to a medical examination once a suspect in police custody is brought before an investigative magistrate and upon request of the suspect or his or her family (art. 60). Under the new anti-torture law, the physical and health status of each detainee must furthermore be registered in the logbooks of the detaining authority (art. 4). After holding numerous interviews with detainees, however, the Special Rapporteur observed that medical examinations upon entry into the penitentiary system are not carried out routinely, they are indeed rare, nor are they regularly ordered by the investigative magistrate when a suspect is first brought to court. 99. Even when a forensic medical examination is performed, it is unlikely to meet minimum international standards for the clinical forensic assessment of victims or to assist the court in finding the truth. Mauritania is plagued by a serious lack of forensic expertise: medical forensic specialists are absent (only one medical doctor has undergone a limited two-month training on medical forensics) and medical personnel in detention centres do not receive specialized training in medical forensics, for example through the use of the Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Istanbul Protocol) or similar tools. In cases of deaths in custody, autopsies are not systematically performed and if they are do not meet minimum international standards. Medical doctors have no knowledge of the Model Protocol for a Legal Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions (the Minnesota Protocol). 100. The lack of forensic medical examinations may be one of the reasons for the very rare application of the exclusionary rule with regard to evidence obtained under torture and the even rarer conviction of perpetrators of torture. This situation deprives the country’s judiciary of information of paramount importance on allegations of torture and ill-treatment and opens the door to impunity for perpetrators of abuse. 6. Lack of monitoring of places of detention and the national preventive mechanism 101. It is alarming that currently in Mauritania places of deprivation of liberty are not monitored officially. Prosecutors and investigative judges who are under a duty to regularly visit places of detention rarely do so, and there is no legal aid or public defenders programme for monitoring places of detention. 17