Support Team at Leeuwkop Max C Prison. One of the examining doctors was “absolutely shocked” at the brutality of the beatings, saying, “[t]he four inmates I examined were all badly beaten but the injuries on two of them indicated they had been severely assaulted, viciously attacked and seriously injured. One of them had bad burn-marks on his back consistent with electric shock. I found contusions, burn marks, bruising, lacerations and swellings on all of them.”viii Italy: electric shock batons used to torture migrants and refugees Amnesty International has documented the repeated use of electric shock batons by Italian police against newly arriving refugees and migrants, particularly to forcibly fingerprint people in police stations. Children were also subjected to such treatment. A 16-year-old boy from Sudan arrived in Italy on 7 June 2016, fleeing the conflict in Darfur, which killed his father, and hoping to join his brother in France. When he was disembarked in Sicily, he was taken to a police station and detained there. He told Amnesty International: “After three days… they took me to the ‘electricity room’. There were three policemen wearing uniforms, plus a woman without uniform … The police then asked me to give fingerprints. I refused. Then they gave me electricity with a stick, many times on the left leg, then on the right leg, chest and belly. I was too weak, I couldn’t resist."ix Both the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) and the European Court of Human Rights have expressed “strong reservations” about the use of electric shock equipment in contact mode, noting that “properly trained law enforcement officials will have many other control techniques available to them when they are in touching distance of a person who has to be brought under control”.x The CPT have raised concerns about the arming of custodial staff with electric shock weapons in certain Council of Europe States and have recommended that “immediate steps be taken to put a stop to custodial staff in police arrest houses routinely carrying electro-shock weapons”.xi Although most cases of torture and ill-treatment have been reported in prisons, detention centres and closed psychiatric facilities, such devices have also been deployed in non-custodial settings including crowd control, with their use in certain cases resulting in injuries and deaths due to crowd fear and stampedes.xii 2.1.2. Body worn electric shock weapons A range of electric shock devices, activated by remote control, are intended for attachment directly to detainee’s bodies; they include stun belts, stun vests and stun cuffs. They are worn, sometimes for many hours at a time, with the constant threat that they would be activated at any moment, and in the case of stun belts will deliver a 50,000 volt shock, via electrodes placed near the detainee’s kidneys, resulting in severe pain for the duration of the shock and causing muscles to contract involuntarily, rendering the subject immobile. Other physical effects can include muscular weakness, involuntary urination and defecation, heartbeat irregularities, seizures and welts on the skin. Although both the UN Committee against Torturexiii and the CPTxiv have condemned the use of stun belts and recommended such practices be halted, they, and other body worn electric shock devices, have been manufactured by companies in the Americas, Africa and Asia, and have been promoted by companies in all regions of the world. These devices have been used to control prisoners in certain countries including South Africa,xv and some states of the United States of America (US),xvi and notoriously employed in a school in the USxvii. United States of America: