observation shall be permissible.” Another issue which the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) pays attention to in its reports is the need for periodic review of decisions on establishing visual and/or electronic control. The above proposed ministerial order does not envisage such obligation. Hence, the Public Defender deems it necessary to expressly articulate in the ministerial order the obligation of such periodic reviews, persons responsible for review and the reasonable intervals at which the review should happen. Only two of the Public Defender’s six substantive comments were taken into consideration. Two of the comments that were agreed with have to do with the possibility of periodic review of decisions on establishing visual and/or electronic surveillance and control and the exclusion of shared toilets and other places from the coverage area of electronic surveillance. The Ministry of Corrections also took into account a technical comment adding a paragraph to Article 5 of the ministerial order, which envisages the obligation of furnishing remand prisoners and convicted prisoners with a copy of the minutes documenting that a prisoner has been warned about the decision to put him/her under visual and/or electronic surveillance. During its visit to the Institution no. 3 on 23 October 2014, the monitoring group went round to inspect the so-called “anti-vandal cell” 63 (Cell no. 229). There were no items in the cell but a matrass on the floor where prisoners sleep on. There was one prisoner in cell who was spilling water from a plastic bottle onto the matrass and the floor and was then lying on the wet matrass. This was a form of protest the prisoner was resorting to in order to object to the ill-treatment against him. According to the prisoner, he had been placed in the cell for one month and eighteen days by then. The representatives of the Institution’s administration failed to inform the monitoring group about how they were going to deal with this prisoner’s problem. They simply stated the prisoner was one of the “problematic prisoners” and this was the reason of his placement in the so-called “anti-vandal cell”. Formally, the prisoner was under electronic surveillance according to the prison director’s decision but in reality he was being subjected to an additional security measure – isolation from other prisoners (“moved to a safe place” 64) but without a formal basis (decision). Whenever a prisoner is placed in a solitary confinement cell as a security measure, the term of keeping the prisoner there should not exceed 24 hours, while if a prisoner is moved to a solitary confinement cell on the ground of moving to a safe place, then it should not exceed 60 days. Because the prisoner was not formally ordered to a security measure, it was unclear how long he could be kept in the so-called “anti-vandal cell”. In respect of use of solitary confinement and extended electronic surveillance during the reporting period, the National Preventive Mechanism inquired into the case of K.G. Convicted prisoner K.G. has been kept isolated from other convicts since 17 November 2013. The director of the Institution no. 7 explained that the security measure has 63 64 This is how the staff of the Institution no. 3 call the cell no. 229 Statute of the remand facility, Article 59 transfer of an accused person to a safe place 46 NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM OF GEORGIA