A/HRC/43/49/Add.1 44. The Special Rapporteur’s team was prevented from completing interviews with four of the five detainees held at the main station of the gendarmerie in Anjouan, as guards interrupted the interviews as soon as the detainees said that they had been ill-treated during and after their arrest. 45. The interviews were stopped on the basis that, formally, the four detainees were no longer being held in custody by the gendarmerie but were under the authority of the pretrial judge, and the Special Rapporteur therefore needed to receive authorization by the investigative judge regarding each individual detainee before being permitted to interview them (a requirement clearly incompatible with the agreed terms of reference). 2. Excessive use of pretrial detention 46. Despite the requirements laid out in the Penal Code, the Special Rapporteur noted that pretrial detention was applied almost automatically, even for minor offences. 5 Furthermore, it also appears to be used to target political opponents and journalists. 47. Lawyers informed the Special Rapporteur that they had tried to denounce the excessive use of pretrial detention of accused persons who posed no real threat to public order or a risk of collusion. 48. Once detained, individuals are reportedly denied visits or telephone calls from family or friends. While lawyers are allowed to meet with their clients after some difficulty, such legal visits are reportedly kept under permanent surveillance with a guard present, contrary to international standards.6 49. Furthermore, detainees are reportedly held in pretrial detention beyond the statutory maximum duration of eight months, without any meaningful procedural steps being taken (investigation, court hearing or any judicial action). 3. Ineffective investigation of complaints of torture and ill-treatment 50. During interviews with detainees, the Special Rapporteur noted their perceptible reluctance to speak about ill-treatment, in large part because of their distrust towards the authorities, and also because of their fear of reprisals. 51. A number of detainees claimed that they had complained about police torture and/or ill-treatment to the judge before whom they had been brought after apprehension, but that the judge had simply ignored their complaint, even when they displayed visible injuries. 52. Of those interviewed, only a few had seen a lawyer, and these persons often complained that their lawyers had made no real effort to present their case. Detainees received no routine medical examination or documentation and no access to their legal records. 53. There is no independent civilian police oversight body in the Comoros tasked with initiating criminal investigations into allegations of torture or ill-treatment by law enforcement officials.7 The prosecutor in Moroni said that there had been only one case of torture in the past 20 years and the responsible officer had been suspended. The prosecutor in Anjouan said that, in 2016, a police officer had been convicted, but that, in his years in office, he had never seen any detainees with injuries transferred by the police to appear before the courts. The Special Rapporteur requested, but did not receive, any case documentation confirming these convictions or statistics on past or current investigations of torture, ill-treatment or abuse of power. 54. The Special Rapporteur found that lawyers, police officers and prosecutors (he was unable to meet with judges as the Government had cancelled that meeting) lacked the 5 6 7 A study by the International Centre for Prison Studies lists the Comoros with the highest proportion of the total prison population in pretrial/remand imprisonment in the world, at 92 per cent. See Roy Walmsley, World Prison Population List, 11th ed. (Institute for Criminal Policy Research, 2015). Available at www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/ world_prison_population_list_11th_edition_0.pdf. See Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, para. 8. See www.policinglaw.info/country/comoros. 7