relevant for the Ministry of Interior professionals. This is seen as one of the key requirements for advancing the police reform process and enhancing the Ministry’s international cooperation opportunities in the context of EU integration and the modernization of policing in Serbia. Accountability In 2011, the Mission provided consultancy in developing a Professional Standards Handbook in partnership with a joint UK – Czech Republic project. This handbook was to serve as a guide for achieving the expected standards of ethical behaviour for all police officers in Serbia. The Handbook was to include: international legal sources pertaining to combating corruption; the Serbian National Strategy on the Fight against Corruption and by-laws of the MoI related to this matter; the legal framework for the fight against corruption in Serbia; a list of anti-corruption organizations, governmental and non-governmental, on both international and national levels; the definition and forms of corruption; a methodology for detecting criminal offenses of corruption and transparency of the procedure; rights and responsibilities of police officers; rights and responsibilities of citizens; and police ethics in the areas related to corruption. Each chapter was to contain a list of references. The Handbook was supposed to serve as a basis for police ethics and integrity training. In its efforts to support the MoI Internal Affairs Division in developing the “Ethics Training Programme”, the LED organized a workshop in October in Belgrade for high-ranking representatives of the MoI (Minister’s Cabinet, Internal Affairs Division, Police Directorate, Division for Finance, Human Resources and Common Affairs, Division for Analytics, Telecommunications and Information Technologies) and Police Unions with the intention to expose them to police ethics programmes used in the USA, Canada and Slovenia, and to formulate a proposal for the development of the future national ethics training for the Serbian police. The group had an opportunity to establish a joint approach to the implementation of a self-study ethics curriculum that was yet to be developed, and to explore a possibility to include ethics curricula as one of the pilot programmes in the e-learning model, which was currently being developed in co-operation between the LED and the MoI. In June, the LED, together with the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and the MoI, organized two two-day workshops on the “Prohibition of Ill-treatment of Persons Detained in Police Holding Facilities” for Contact Officers of the Regional Police Departments with the Ministry’s Commission for Monitoring and Implementation of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. The conference was part of the LED’s efforts to assist the MoI in the area of safer detention and handling of persons in police custody. The workshops helped the MoI’s Anti-torture Commission Contact Officers to improve their knowledge of the international standards on the treatment of persons deprived of liberty in police detention. The workshops also helped to identify shortcomings in the existing national regulation pertaining to police custody, and offered possible solutions to remedy these shortcomings, as well as to enhance reporting on treatment of persons in police detention. In September, the LED and the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights jointly organized a seminar for national police trainers on “Police Work and the Prohibition of Ill-treatment and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”. The seminar was held for 29 national police trainers and training co-ordinators at the Centre for Basic Police Training in Sremska Kamenica. The seminar aimed to enhance professional competence of the trainers and coordinators on international human rights standards related to police work and the prohibition of ill-treatment, covering the following topics: the European Court of Human Rights case-law related to police work; the national legislation regulating the prohibition of torture and the use of force; the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the importance of its visits to places of detention under the Ministry of Interior; the obligation of the state to conduct a timely, effective and independent investigation into all allegations of ill-treatment; and the treatment of persons from vulnerable groups by the police. In the interest of 64