30 5. The NPM’s visits In order to perform my tasks related to the NPM, I have to regularly examine the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty and held at various places of detention specified in Article 4 of the OPCAT also in the absence of any petition or alleged impropriety.89 The primary objective of the NPM’s visits is to establish which elements of the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty may lead to torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and how to prevent them. Another important task of the NPM is to make recommendations in order to prevent these elements from happening or recurring.90 As a general rule, the staff members of the Department do not inquire into complaints lodged with the Office. The only exceptions are submissions containing data or information indicative of the violation of the provisions on the prohibition of sanctions, stipulated in Article 21.1 of the OPCAT. The Department forwarded all complaints submitted to the NPM’s homepage or to my colleagues during the visits to the competent organizational unit of my Office. Although inquiring into the complaints submitted to the NPM’s homepage falls outside the Department’s jurisdiction, studying them provides guidelines for selecting the visits’ locations and the inspection criteria. 5.1. Planning and preparing the visits By virtue of the Ombudsman Act, “the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights shall determine the rules and methods of his inquiries in normative instructions.”91 The preventive visits by the NPM are conducted in accordance with a schedule of visits approved during the previous year. Upon selecting a place of detention to inspect, I also appoint the head of the visiting delegation, and the preparations begin. The head of the visiting delegation studies the conclusions and recommendations of the Ombudsman’s reports on investigations conducted at the selected place of detention or other places of detention of the same type, the reports of other National Preventive Mechanisms, international organizations, foreign and domestic civil organizations conducting visits to places of detention, as well as the provisions of the relevant legal regulations. The visiting delegations also check the implementation of my earlier recommendations made in reports on earlier visits made within the frameworks of performing my general fundamental-rights-protections duties. In certain cases, upon the initiative of the head of the visiting delegation, experts by experience possessing practical knowledge of the operation of the selected place of detention are also involved in the visit’s preparation. The reports of the experts by experience contribute to recognizing facts and circumstances potentially resulting in ill-treatment. My Office handles both the personal data and the reports of the experts by experience confidentially.92 Visits are conducted in accordance with the visiting plan drafted by the head of the visiting delegation and approved by me. In addition to naming the place of detention selected, the visiting plan also contains the date and time of the visit, the names and qualifications of the members of the visiting delegation, as well as their official positions. The inspection criteria are approved together with the visiting plan, as an annex thereto. See Section 39/B(1) of the Ombudsman Act Report on the Visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to The Maldives (February 26, 2009), Clause 5 91 See Section 30 of the Ombudsman Act 92 See Article 21.2 of the OPCAT 89 90