in an extensive reform programme which included staff training. A great deal of emphasis had been placed on establishing the best relations possible between staff and prisoners. In 2002 only two instances of excessive use of force were reported. The first incident concerned a mentally ill prisoner who had been beaten by a prison guard for refusing to leave his cell. The second concerned a prisoner who physically attacked a witness in court; force was used to subdue the prisoner when he had already begun to retreat. The guards involved in these two cases were punished by paying them only half of their salaries for three months. Had those acts resulted in serious injuries to the prisoners, the incidents would have been treated as assaults, i.e. as criminal cases. 205. The Director further explained that all prisoners were examined by a doctor upon their arrival in prison. Any injuries were noted. The medical reports were made available to the prisoner’s lawyer, his or her family, the Minister of the Interior and the investigating judge. Furthermore, the doctor on duty told the Committee members that about five years earlier detainees complained frequently of having been tortured or ill-treated by the police when they arrived in prison and that there had been some serious cases. Since then the situation had changed a great deal, although there were still detainees who reported having been beaten and who had slight injuries. The members of the Committee looked at the medical records of the inmates who had arrived since January 2002. There were 167 men and 8 women, of whom 39 men had alleged having been beaten, 24 had injuries that had been described by the doctors as “not serious” and 3 had “serious” injuries. 206. While in Spuž the Committee members interviewed three prisoners. One of them, recently arrived, claimed that the police had beaten him in front of his family in Berhane. According to his medical report he had three fractured ribs. The second interviewee, who had been convicted of drug trafficking, stated that when he was arrested in 1998 he was held in custody for three days before being brought before a judge. He alleged that during those three days he had been beaten and threatened with a pistol shoved into his mouth in order to get him to provide information about drug dealers operating in Montenegro. Before being brought before a judge he did not have access to a lawyer. The third interviewee had been arrested some three days prior to the Committee’s visit to Spuž, at the Yugoslav-Hungarian border, for attempted robbery and for shooting and wounding two petrol station attendants. He claimed that for about one day he was deprived of food and water, was not allowed to go to the toilet and was kept with his hands tied very tightly behind his back. 207. While in Montenegro the Committee members also visited the police station in Danilovgrad, where there were no detainees at the time. They also visited the central police station in Podgorica where there was one detainee who had just been arrested. Although the members insisted on interviewing him in private, they were not allowed to do so for reasons that were not clear. 208. The situation in Montenegro regarding the right to file complaints and to have one’s complaint examined does not seem to differ much from that in Serbia. Victims who file complaints very often find themselves being prosecuted for obstructing a law enforcement officer in the performance of his duty, and investigating judges do not inform prosecutors of allegations of torture or ill-treatment made by detainees. The Montenegrin authorities still do not recognize the applicability of the new Federal Code of Criminal Procedure in the Republic and continue to apply the 1976 Code, under which a person arrested by the police has to be presented 80