A/HRC/43/49/Add.1 23. The Juvenile Division (Brigade des mineurs) is part of the national police force, with 15 employees in Moroni, but it lacks training and resources. It has no vehicles or cells in which to place detainees during custody (garde à vue). 24. The Special Rapporteur received accounts of the excessive use of force by the gendarmerie and the National Police Intervention Unit, primarily during the policing of demonstrations. There were reports of one death and dozens wounded by gunshots in protests during the presidential referendum on 25 March 2019. The National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms confirmed the number of wounded above, but it could not ascertain if the injuries were caused by security forces or opposition protestors. 25. The Penal Code does not contain a specific definition of sedition but criminalizes speech that can lead to public disorder (arts. 178–181). Furthermore, article 91 prohibits unarmed gatherings that could disturb the public peace. Articles 247 and 253 criminalize offences against the President through the media or other forms of speech. These vague and broad laws with severe penalties have the cumulative effect of legitimizing a heavy police presence in the lives of civil society, political opponents and journalists. 2. Police violence during apprehension and interrogation 26. The Special Rapporteur heard some allegations of torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the gendarmerie and the National Police Intervention Unit, almost always occurring at the time of apprehension and interrogation during custody. Most detainees reported that such treatment (threats, insults, kicking and beating) was used by investigative officers to intimidate them or to force them to confess to an alleged crime. 27. Furthermore, some detainees who were interviewed claimed to have been held and ill-treated for several days in unofficial places of detention before being officially apprehended by the police. Similar reports were also submitted from civil society, concerning incommunicado detention in various locations, including the basement of the Ministry of the Interior building and by the National Police Intervention Unit, where persons were held in isolation and subjected to threats and psychological ill-treatment. 28. The culture of the police appears to imply that ill-treatment is acceptable. In particular, there is an overreliance on confession-based evidence at the investigation stage of criminal cases, which constitutes one of the main incentives for law enforcement officials to resort to torture and ill-treatment. 29. The Special Rapporteur heard consistent allegations of the excessive use of physical force (mainly beatings) during the period of arrest and sometimes during interrogation by the gendarmerie and the national police force. 3. Excessive use of force and intimidation and arbitrary arrest 30. Under article 91 of the Penal Code of 1981 (as amended), the police or other law enforcement agency may use force to disperse an unlawful assembly if violence is used against them or if they cannot defend by other means the area they occupy or for which they are responsible. The amount of force that may be used is not restricted. 31. According to the Director General of the national police force, officers are not formally trained either in human rights or in general police work due to a lack of funds, but they are guided by their colleagues with “on the job training”. In the past three years, the Director General has received only one serious complaint of physical abuse, which led to the officer’s termination and sanction. Contrary to the gendarmerie and the National Police Intervention Unit, the national police are unarmed; they carry truncheons, but no firearms. 32. In official meetings, the gendarmerie and the National Police Intervention Unit both stated that there were no cases of torture. However, the Special Rapporteur received a number of consistent reports of the excessive use of force during the policing of assemblies and of physical and psychological torture upon arrest, primarily at the hands of the gendarmerie and the National Police Intervention Unit. 4. Death penalty 33. There is a moratorium on the death penalty, and the last known execution was in 1997. Those on death row are held in small, overcrowded, dark and poorly ventilated cells 5