E/CN.4/1999/61/Add.1 page 8 young students, allegedly members of a “Revolutionary People Salvation Army Front”, refused to be interviewed individually by the Special Rapporteur. One of the girls was noted to have large bruises under both eyes. It was not possible to receive an explanation from her as to how she got these bruises. The Anti-Terror Branch, which held her in custody for some days, explained that these bruises were caused by her resisting the police at the moment of her arrest. In Istanbul, some of the people on remand for ordinary crimes testified that they had been tortured or ill-treated while in custody, as did some of the political prisoners in Diyarbakir. C. Information concerning prisons 24. The practice of torture in prisons and use of excessive force to terminate disturbances are also alleged to be widespread. Prisoners are currently held in wards, but there is talk of introducing a cell system. Political prisoners and some human rights organizations are against the cells because they fear that these will become torture chambers. With the ward system, torture is more difficult because inmates protect each other and, generally, torture or ill-treatment occurs when a prisoner is being transferred to court or to another prison. It was noted that ordinary prisoners in general prefer the cell system. It is also reported that often juvenile prisoners are kept in the same wards as older prisoners. The Special Rapporteur met Sevgi Kaya, an alleged victim of torture, who declared that when she was 15 years old she was kept in BayrampaÕa prison in Istanbul in an ordinary ward. 25. The prison personnel are often insufficiently trained. Recruitment of prison warders may be based more on physical attributes than socio-psychological ones. The training is minimal (in Istanbul, for example, one month of in-service training on how to treat prisoners and administrative responsibilities; in Diyarbakir, one week of initial training and then one week every year). Especially in the south-east, according to non-official sources, there is allegedly a tendency to choose people with an extreme right-wing or nationalist background. Early in 1998, the Head of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, Dr. Sema PiÕkinsüt, visited prisons and custody centres in 14 provinces in order to study the situation of inmates. The report has not yet been published, but she communicated some of her findings to the Special Rapporteur. She found that terrorist prisoners are subjected to the same kind of ill-treatment as other prisoners. Her other findings included the fact that there appears to be no discrimination against prisoners based on ethnic origin; the length of legal proceedings is too long; enforcement officers who commit wrongdoings are influenced by their background and the situation in their provinces. She concluded that the latter situation could be improved by better training. On the positive side, awareness among prison personnel that ill-treatment of prisoners is unlawful is improving a recent development. D. Information concerning individual cases 26. The Special Rapporteur also had the opportunity to speak with a number of alleged victims of torture in Ankara, Diyarbakir and Istanbul. Some of the cases are referred to in the annex.