Of these 1,104 persons were detained in police premises for misdemeanours against public order alone. On the basis of these statistics, the protection afforded by the new CPC, including the right of access to a defence counsel, appears not to apply to a significant number of individuals detained by the police. 181. The general principle concerning the right to a defence counsel is contained in article 5 of CPC, according to which a person deprived of liberty shall be immediately informed that he is entitled to a defence counsel of his own choice and to request that members of his family or other persons close to him be informed of his detention. 182. Article 226 of CPC provides that in the course of collecting information an individual may be summoned by the police but may not be questioned for more than four hours. Force may not be used to obtain information from citizens. An official note or a record shall be read to a person who has given information. This person may raise objections, and the police authorities are obliged to note them in the official note or record. The same article states that when the police are collecting information from a person who for good reasons is suspected of being the perpetrator of a criminal offence, that person may be summoned as a suspect; the summons shall contain information to the effect that the suspect is entitled to have a defence counsel. If in the course of collecting information the police authority deems the person who is summoned to be a suspect, it should immediately inform him of the criminal offence with which he is charged, of his right to have a defence counsel, who shall be present at further interrogations, and that he is not obliged to answer the questions put to him in the absence of his defence counsel. Article 226 also stipulates that the police authority shall inform the public prosecutor when a suspect is being interrogated; the public prosecutor may be present at the interrogation. 183. According to article 5 of CPC, a person who has been detained without a court warrant shall immediately be brought before the competent investigating judge. Article 227, paragraph 3, states that if the escort of the person deprived of liberty takes longer than eight hours, owing to unavoidable obstacles, the authorized police official is obliged to give the reasons for the delay in a statement to be submitted to the investigating judge. Furthermore, article 229 stipulates that a person deprived of liberty cannot be held by the police for the purpose of gathering information for more than 48 hours before being brought before a judge.3 184. According to the information received by the Committee members, the above principles seem to be generally observed in cases where CPC applies. Nevertheless, torture still seems to take place during the 48 hours before the suspect is brought before a judge and before he is given the opportunity to contact his lawyer. Sometimes the suspect is not allowed to call in his lawyer or does not know a lawyer, in which case he is obliged to choose one from the list proposed by the police. In some of the cases examined by the members the alleged victims complained that the lawyer’s role had been perfunctory and that he had paid no attention to the fact that his client had been ill-treated. 185. Some of the officials with whom the Committee members met argued that it did not make sense for the police to extract confessions under duress, given that such confessions could not be used as evidence in legal proceedings. In this regard, article 89 of CPC stipulates that it is forbidden to use force in order to obtain a statement or confession from a defendant and that, in case of failure to comply with this provision, the decision of the court may not be based on such statements or confessions. The members believe, however, that even if convictions cannot be based exclusively on confessions the police still use the information extracted from detainees to 75