A/HRC/19/61/Add.1
2.
Conditions of detention
101.
The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government:
(a)
Strengthen efforts to improve detention conditions, in particular with a
view to providing health care, improving the quality of food and ensuring the
separation of minors from adults and of pretrial prisoners from convicts;
(b)
Introduce independent and effective complaints mechanisms within all
places of detention and ensure that all detainees have unimpeded and unsupervised
access to the enforcement judge upon request, that any complaints are followed up by
independent investigations, and that complainants do not suffer any reprisals.
Complaints mechanisms must be made known and accessible to the public, including
to persons deprived of their liberty, through telephone hotlines or confidential
complaints boxes in detention facilities.
3.
Safeguards and prevention
102.
The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government:
(a)
Have the highest authorities, in particular those responsible for law
enforcement activities, declare unambiguously that they will not tolerate torture or
similar ill-treatment by public officials and that those in command at the time abuses
are perpetrated will be held personally responsible for them;
(b)
Encourage judges and prosecutors to routinely ask persons arriving
from police custody how they have been treated, and to order an independent medical
examination in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol if they suspect that detainees
have been subjected to ill-treatment; an ex-officio investigation should be initiated
whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe that a confession was obtained
through torture and ill-treatments;
(c)
Ensure that safeguards during arrest and detention, such as rules
governing warrants and access to a lawyer, are guaranteed in practice; amend the
legislation to reduce the lawful duration of garde à vue to a maximum of 48 hours and
ensure that access to a lawyer during the garde à vue period is provided for in law;
ensure that a mandatory independent medical examination is conducted upon a
detainee’s arrival in prison; shift the burden of proof to prosecution, to prove beyond
reasonable doubt that a confession was not obtained under any kind of duress; and
consider video and audiotaping interrogations;
(d)
Ensure that legislation concerning evidence to be adduced in judicial
proceedings be brought in line with the provisions of article 15 of the Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
so as to explicitly exclude any evidence obtained through torture, and that persons
convicted on the basis of such evidence are acquitted and released;
(e)
Ensure that medical staff in places of detention are independent from the
organs of justice administration, by transferring them from the Ministry of Justice to
the Ministry of Health; provide training for the forensic medical services in the
medical investigation of torture and other forms of ill-treatment;
(f)
Establish an effective national preventive mechanism (NPM) in full
compliance with the Paris Principles by either designating the national human rights
institution as an NPM, or establishing a separate independent NPM in accordance
with the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment;
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