international law (as is the case for statements obtained by torture) is still problematic in legislation and practice on a national level. In addition, Fair Trials’ recent research on the use of illegally obtained evidence shows a certain reluctance from judges to apply the exclusionary rule to illegally obtained evidence. Where exclusion of evidence may result in an acquittal, judges are reluctant to take a principled stance on unlawful evidence (Fair Trials, Unlawful evidence in Europe’s courts: principles, practice and remedies, 2021 p. 46). The same reluctance is also seen on an international level with the International Criminal Court’s Trial Chamber X recently taking a compartmentalized view of the interview process in Al Hassan and refusing to look into torture allegations outside of the interview room (Fair Trials, op. cit., 2021, p. 46). Effective application of the exclusionary rule is also difficult in practice. Our research shows that most civil law systems are built in a way that only allows challenges of the legality of evidence in the trial stage. A decision on the legality of evidence is often taken by the same judges that will rule on the guilt or innocence (Fair Trials, op. cit., 2021, p. 45-46). However, at the trial stage it is often too late to distinguish which evidence was obtained illegally and which was gathered independently. Illegal evidence gathering methods are also often unrecorded and are not used to obtain direct evidence but rather information that leads to new, seemingly untainted evidence (Fair Trials, op. cit., 2021, pp. 3536). Even if it was possible to trace the origin of the evidence at this stage, the fruit of poisonous tree doctrine is almost never applied in civil law systems (Fair Trials, op. cit., 2021, pp. 35-36). Thus violations of rights can result in tangible benefit for prosecutions. States need to create conditions for effective judicial review of the legality of evidence early in the process. In principle an opportunity to independently examine legality of evidence at the pre-trial stage would help detect and exclude torture evidence early on. A crucial piece in this process is keeping detailed records about the evidence gathering process which are also disclosed to the defence. A lack of information about the evidence gathering process to both defence and judges is a major obstacle to the effective review of the legality and potential exclusion of unlawful evidence (Fair Trials, op. cit., 2021, pp. 43-45). It also prevents holding authorities to account for their actions, and fails to create a disincentive for the use of torture. 21