A/HRC/19/61/Add.1 the suspect within four days. The same article makes it mandatory for the judicial police to have a detainee examined by a doctor upon the request of the detainee or his relatives. 19. Although the Prosecutor General must give reasons supported by a written statement when authorizing extensions of the garde à vue period, the Special Rapporteur observes that the law does not explicitly prescribe the point at which the initial period of garde à vue officially starts. 20. The Special Rapporteur expresses concern about the excessive length of garde à vue during which detainees do not have access to a lawyer. In addition, given the practice of the past regime and the fact that ill-treatment normally happens prior to the registration of police arrest, the Special Rapporteur expresses concern about the period of deprivation of liberty soon after arrest and before the detainee is officially acknowledged to be in garde à vue, as it is during this period when the basic safeguards are generally not provided for in practice. In this regard the Special Rapporteur welcomes the expressed intention of the authorities to allow detainees immediate access to a lawyer. 3. Complaints and investigations of acts of torture and ill-treatment 21. Tunisian law provides for three different types of redress mechanisms for persons alleging to have been subjected to torture or other human rights violations: legal, administrative and national. 22. Legal redress mechanisms include the public prosecutors and their deputies, investigating judges, sentence enforcement judges and other courts of law. According to article 26 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Prosecutor General, investigating judges and the judges of indictment office are mandated with receiving complaints and carrying out investigations. 23. Article 342, paragraph 3, of the Code states that a sentence enforcement judge may wish to meet with inmates or other persons in a private office and that he may wish to examine the disciplinary record book. Inmates can also request to meet with the sentence enforcement judge during one of his periodic inspection tours of the prison (article 17, paragraph 7, of Law No. 52 of 2001). 24. National redress mechanisms include the Higher Commission on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which is tasked with receiving complaints, including cases involving acts of torture or ill-treatment. If reconstituted in accordance with the Paris Principles, the Commission could potentially be constituted into a credible, independent and reliable complaints mechanism. 25. Administrative redress mechanisms include citizens’ liaison bureaus at the Ministry of Justice and at the Prisons Administration. III. Assessment of the situation A. 1. Before the revolution Endemic practice of torture and ill-treatment 26. The Special Rapporteur received many reports and testimonies indicating that the Ben Ali regime was marked by widely reported cases of torture and ill-treatment. The systematic practice of torture and ill-treatment was deeply entrenched and institutionalized within the security sector, with torture being practiced and abetted by law enforcement officials, the former State Security Department (DSS, also known as the “political police”), Ministry of the Interior personnel and prison staff, with complete impunity. 7