CAT/C/48/D/453/2011 2.6 During the three days in which the complainant was held incommunicado, he was subjected to questioning designed to extract a statement confirming that he was guilty of the charges laid against him. One police officer told him to confess and he was forced to learn self-incriminating statements by heart. The complainant was forced to practise his testimony. In one practice run he was beaten and threatened because the police officers were not satisfied with his performance. They lifted him by his hair and forced him to read out the statement until he did so correctly. His statement was taken under duress on three occasions before the police investigator. The complainant was not properly defended because, although assigned counsel was present, counsel took no active part in the proceedings and the complainant was given no opportunity to confer with him in private and inform him of the circumstances under which his statement to the police was made.4 2.7 As a result of the torture, the complainant admitted that he was guilty of destroying public property and of association with and membership in a terrorist organization, in connection with the murder of a Bilbao Provincial High Court judge, José María Lidón Corbi, carried out by members of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) organization on 7 November 2001. The complainant stated that, at the request of an ETA member and childhood friend, he had kept various public officials, including Judge Lidón Corbi, under surveillance and passed information on to the organization. 2.8 On 28 October 2002, the complainant was brought before the Fourth Examining Magistrate’s Court of the National High Court. In the course of the proceedings, the complainant recounted that, during his three days of detention in Arkaute police station, he had been forced to stand facing the wall and in uncomfortable positions, been beaten even when he fainted, been deprived of sleep, food and water, except when forced to drink, and been subjected to threats. He added that he had informed the forensic doctor of his illtreatment. The complainant retracted all the statements he had made while in police custody and denied involvement in the acts of which he had been accused, namely the gathering of information for ETA with a view to murdering Mr. Lidón Corbi. He stated that he knew one member of ETA, but only “by sight”, and that he had never passed any information on to him. 2.9 The complainant was held in pretrial detention in Soto del Real prison (in the Madrid region) for several months. He was later moved to the prisons of Alcalá Meco (Madrid region), Alicante and Valdemoro (Madrid region) and was being held in Castellón prison, 686 kilometres from his place of residence, at the time that his complaint was submitted to the Committee. 2.10 On 29 January 2003, he filed a complaint before the police court of Donostia-San Sebastián against the police officers who had been involved in his arrest, custody and questioning for the torture and ill-treatment to which he had been subjected. He requested that the reports made by doctors to whom he had been taken while in detention, in national 4 4 Magistrate’s Court of Vitoria-Gasteiz on 10 February 2004, it is stated that: “Mr. Gallastegi did not tell the forensic doctor who examined him in Arkaute about the treatment he was receiving in the custody of the Ertzaintza. Only later, when he was out of their reach, did he dare to do so before the judge and forensic doctor of the National High Court.” In the complaint submitted to the Committee, no reference is made to this last medical examination. According to the ruling of 4 December 2006 by the second criminal division of the Supreme Court, the complainant was examined for a third time by a forensic doctor of the First Central Examining Magistrate’s Court of the National High Court on 28 October 2002. On that occasion, the complainant allegedly refused to undress and stated that nothing was wrong with him. In his written statement of 29 January 2003 to the police court in Donostia-San Sebastián, the complainant states that the assigned counsel “remained silent, even when I said that I had been tortured”. GE.12-43762