Human Rights Watch found that Islamists accused or convicted of crimes against national security face greater abuse than ordinary prisoners.156 Judicial cooperation with countries that torture The Chechen network investigation illustrates another cause for concern: judicial cooperation with countries with poor records on torture in order to gather information useful to criminal investigations in France. Information gathered by French investigative judges through “international inquiry commissions” enjoys considerable legitimacy in French courts. A French investigating judge traveled to Amman and submitted questions for Abu Attiya to Jordanian authorities. When told that Abu Attiya has alleged ill-treatment in Jordanian custody, the investigating judge told Human Rights Watch, “I don’t know anything about that.”157 The same French judge also traveled to Syria with a list of questions for a man named Said Arif, who would become one of the main figures in the Chechen Network trial. These questions were presented at the trial accompanied by “answers” in parenthesis.158 All of the evidence emanating from Arif’s detention in Syria was eventually excluded from trial because the court accepted Arif’s claims that he was tortured throughout the year he spent in the custody of the Syrian secret service. Arif described inhuman conditions, isolation, beatings, and torture with a television cable and a tire. He told French officials, “I was forced to admit facts I didn’t know, ignoring, up until the last day of my detention, that there was an international inquiry commission and without the assistance of a lawyer.”159 Arif was convicted in June 2006 of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced to nine years in prison. Torture is a serious, well-documented problem in Syria, especially during interrogations. Methods reported by former prisoners, detainees and human rights organizations include electrical shocks, pulling out of fingernails, burning genitalia, forcing objects into the rectum, 156 See Human Rights Watch, Torture and Impunity in Jordan’s Prisons, October 2008, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/10/08/torture-and-impunity-jordan-s-prisons-0. 157 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with former investigating judge, April 15, 2008. 158 Document 3685, evidence submitted at trial, cited in the written conclusions of Said Arif’s defense lawyer, Sébastien Bono, p. 71. On file with Human Rights Watch. 159 Procès-Verbal d’Interrogatoire, Septembre 13, 2004, Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, Ref. Gen : 02.312.3909/5, Ref. Cab. : 1449. On file with Human Rights Watch. “No Questions Asked” 54