E/CN.4/1996/35/Add.2 page 12 investigation is made into any reported abuse, and if any evidence, including criminal evidence, is found, the Code of Penal Procedure or the Code of Military Justice is applied. They also said that a record was kept of the time and place of any police proceedings, and that such information had to be provided to a judge on request. III. PROTECTION OF THE RIGHT NOT TO BE TORTURED A. Legislation and procedural rules 43. Under the Government of President Aylwin a number of legislative measures were taken for the purposes of preventing and punishing torture. The reservations to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and to the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture were withdrawn. In terms of domestic legislation, Act No. 19.047 of 14 February 1991 amended several articles of the Code of Penal Procedure in order better to safeguard the rights of persons, in particular by improving protection for the integrity of detainees and by reducing the periods of incommunicado detention allowed under the earlier system. As torture occurs mainly during the period of police detention, frequently for the purpose of extracting a confession, it is worth examining the legal regime instituted by the Code in this respect. 44. Where periods of detention are concerned, under normal conditions all detainees must be brought before a judge within 24 hours of their capture in cases of flagrante delicto or 48 hours in other cases (arts. 270 bis of the Code and 19.7 of the Constitution). The period of detention may in no circumstances exceed five days from the date on which the person arrested is brought before the court (art. 272). However, provision is made for exceptional periods of detention. Thus article 272 bis stipulates that a judge may, in a substantiated decision, extend the period of detention of 48 hours ordered or instituted by any other authority to a period of five days. When acts which the law classifies as terrorist are being investigated, the judge may extend the period of 48 hours to 10 days. 45. In the decision prolonging the period of detention in the cases referred to above, the court is required to order the detainee to be examined by a physician designated by the judge, who has to carry out the examination and report to the court on the same day as the decision. Under no circumstances may an official of the police unit which made the arrest or by whom the detainee is held be appointed for this purpose. Once the judge’s authorization has expired, the detainee must in all cases be brought immediately before the judge and placed at his disposal. Gross negligence on the part of the judge in providing proper protection for a detainee will be considered a breach of duty. Non-governmental sources nevertheless criticized the fact that the obligation to carry out a medical examination only applied when the period of detention was prolonged, while with respect to the initial 48-hour period, a crucial one in respect of potential abuses, the regulations appeared somewhat ambiguous. In addition, officials from the Forensic Medicine Department said that on account of their limited resources they were not always able to comply with a request from a judge for an immediate examination of a detainee, and that several days might go by before the examination took place.