A/HRC/22/53/Add.1 temporary and pretrial detention facilities, as well as open regime colonies, visited were acceptable and, in many cases, even good and decent. The Special Rapporteur notes that, while inmates benefitted from the above-mentioned preparations, it is in the interest of the State to allow monitoring of actual conditions, especially if improvements are only temporary. 68. The temporary detention facilities visited were invariably clean and well kept, although many seemed to have been recently painted. In almost all temporary and pretrial detention facilities visited, there was no separation between convicted and pretrial inmates. In the facilities visited, tuberculosis patients were held separately. 69. The Special Rapporteur noted that there was no permanent medical presence in temporary detention facilities, and health emergencies were handled by calling an ambulance. The pretrial detention facilities visited had modestly equipped medical units, and there was a shortage of medical personnel. Meals (of poor nutritional value and in small portions) were served three times a day. Drinking water was largely accessible. There was no television sets or telephones at the disposal of inmates, and very limited (if any) recreational activities were available. 70. As noted elsewhere in the present report, during their detention in temporary detention facilities, detainees were taken to the officers of investigators where some were coerced into confessions or even severely mistreated. The Special Rapporteur received numerous complaints of threats, humiliation and mistreatment by detention facility employees, especially in relation to those imprisoned for life. The Special Rapporteur was informed that the penitentiary system throughout the country lacked specialized medical staff. 71. The complaints received from inmates during visits to penitentiary institutions revealed consistent, broad patterns of the application of various methods of torture and illtreatment during arrest and investigation, as well as of denial of access to legal counsel. The Special Rapporteur received complaints indicating that the testimonies obtained under torture were used by courts as grounds to hand down long terms of imprisonment. Most of the written complaints received by the Special Rapporteur named the perpetrators, who were also officials of the State Committee for National Security and the Ministry of the Interior. 72. The Special Rapporteur received complaints about the lack of occupational and recreational activities in detention facilities and about the bribes required to have access to such activities, the absence of independent complaint mechanisms, the fear of reprisals by the administration against inmates filing a complaint, as well as about serving a sentence in a closed regime despite a court ruling sentencing the inmate to a colony settlement. 2. Juvenile justice 73. The Special Rapporteur learned that children in conflict with the law were often mistreated by police inquiry officers of the Ministry of the Interior during arrest and at various stages of detention. According to credible reports, in the juvenile colony and in the basement of a special school for underage offenders run by the Ministry of Education, children were reportedly kept in disciplinary isolation cells for up to 15 days as a disciplinary measure for breaking the establishment’s rules. The Special Rapporteur recalls that juvenile offenders, children or minors should not be subjected to solitary confinement of any duration at all. 74. Despite the recently adopted child protection policy prohibiting violence against children in closed institutions and establishing a complaint procedure, in practice there is no accessible and effective complaint mechanism available to children in these facilities. 14