Tips for monitors Tips for monitors 2: Conducting interviews As with any visit to a place of detention, the monitoring team should have a firm idea beforehand of whom it would like to interview. In addition to prisoners and prison officials and staff, monitors may also consider interviews outside of the detention facility, with representatives of relevant ministries and other agencies, prosecutors, judges, defence lawyers and legal aid providers involved in terrorismand violent extremism-related cases. Oversight bodies, CSOs working on counterterrorism issues and/or prisoners’ rights and support groups, as well as families of detainees, may also be able to provide relevant information. Monitors might also consider seeking information from or interviewing external stakeholders involved in disengagement programmes (including social workers, faith-based representatives, CSOs, and associations of victims of terrorism), experts on counter-terrorism issues and individuals previously held in the detention facility that is being monitored or in similar conditions. Given the sensitive nature of VERLT and specific vulnerabilities and risks some interviewees may face, particular thought should be given to the environment in which interviews with different stakeholders might best take place, and under what conditions. As for any other prison visit, the importance of ensuring the confidentiality of interviews and obtaining informed consent of the interviewees is of utmost 354 importance. This is especially true in high-security settings, where surveillance is ever-present. Monitors should seek to interview people of their choice in private in a suitable choice of location. They should avoid talking only to those who seek interviews with them or are proposed by staff. Detention monitoring bodies should also be attentive to the potential risks of reprisals their interviewees might face from other detainees and prison staff for talking to monitors, a risk that may be 355 exacerbated in the context of the topic under consideration. OPCAT Article 21(2) explicitly states that no authority or official “… shall order, apply, permit or tolerate any sanction against any person or organization for having communicated to the national preventive mechanism any information, whether true or false…”. Moreover, the SPT has developed its own detailed guidance on reprisals in a 2016 document. In this publication, the Subcommittee stated: “The national preventive mechanism should develop a strategy for preventing reprisals and threats by detention centre staff, as well as by fellow detainees, against those interviewed during visits and others who may provide sensitive or critical information before or after a visit. Such a strategy should also address threats of 356 reprisal against members and staff of the mechanism.” The document highlights a set of eight measures that NPMs should take to counter the threat of reprisals against NPM staff and third parties. These measures can be employed by NPM and 357 non-NPM monitors alike, and especially by monitors engaged in VERLT issues. 354 See, for example, APT, Monitoring Places of Detention, op. cit., note 10, pp. 78-82; and APT, Monitoring Police Custody: A Practical Guide (APT, Geneva, Switzerland 2013) 58-59. 355 APT, “Detention Monitoring Briefing No.4 – Mitigating the Risks of Sanctions related to Detention Monitoring”, January 2012. 356 SPT, “Analytical Assessment Tool for National Preventive Mechanisms”, CAT/OP/1/Rev.1, 25 January 2016 para. 37. 357 Ibid., para. 37 (a)-(h). 74