E/CN.4/1995/34 page 139 the judge about ill-treatment and received regular visits from his wife. He could also have access to his lawyer. The latter, however, had not yet asked the judge for permission to see his client. 725. In connection with the response provided by the Government, the source stated that, without disputing the findings of the police laboratory, its main concern arose from the fact that no autopsies had been carried out on the bodies of those who died, either to investigate allegations of torture or to establish the cause of death. The Government’s reply did not contain any response to allegations that the detainees died as a result of torture, ill-treatment and asphyxiation after 40 of them were crammed into a small cell. No inquiry into these serious allegations appears to have been carried out. Tunisia Information transmitted to the Government and replies received 726. By letter dated 3 May 1994 the Special Rapporteur advised the Government that he had received information indicating that torture, although forbidden in the Constitution and legal codes, was frequently practised in police, gendarmerie and national guard stations throughout the country, especially against suspected opponents of the Government such as sympathizers of the al Nahda Islamic Movement and the Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie (PCOT). Methods of torture reported included severe beatings, sometimes while the victim was suspended in contorted positions, electric shocks, and insertion of broken bottles or other sharp objects into the anus. Such methods were said to have been employed mainly to extract confessions or information, as well as for punishment or intimidation. 727. Article 13 bis of the Code of Penal Procedure provides that suspects may not be detained by the police or the gendarmerie for more than 4 days and that the Procureur de la République must be informed of any detention and may prolong garde à vue, by written order, for a further 4 days. Only "in case of absolute necessity" may garde à vue be prolonged for a further 2 days to a total of 10 days. During or after the garde à vue period the detainee or any member of his or her immediate family may request a medical examination. The dates and times of the beginning and end of garde à vue detention and the dates and times at which each interrogation begins and finishes must be noted in a register kept in each police station. It was reported, however, that the police and the gendarmerie frequently falsified records in order to make it appear as though they had adhered to the legal limits of garde à vue. 728. It was also alleged that formal requests, stamped by the Procureur’s office, for the medical examination of persons detained for political reasons, in accordance with article 13 bis, were consistently ignored. Procureurs were said to have been ready, without question, to accept forged documents produced by the police and their own officials while ignoring well-attested evidence of illegally prolonged garde à vue detention. Detention centres wherein inmates allegedly had been illegally held and tortured were not visited or inspected by the Procureurs, and the few investigations opened by Procureurs into cases of ill-treatment, torture or suspicious death were either dropped or else had carried on interminably and without results.