A/HRC/13/39/Add.5 it has been successfully pursued. Usually, authorities fail to even detain alleged perpetrators, as illustrated by the cases of Al-Duri in Austria and Almatov in Germany.92 Moreover, in the Al-Duri case, Austria argued that the lack of any extradition request prevented it from exercising universal jurisdiction, despite the fact that the need for conditions such as the existence of an extradition request were explicitly rejected at the drafting stage. This argument was again unambiguously rejected by the Committee against Torture in the Habre case.93 Such specious arguments clearly demonstrate States’ disinclination to make use of this tool for combating torture and bringing offenders to justice. 155. There have been occasional successes such as the UK’s case against Afghan warlord Farayadi Sarwar Zardad for conspiring to torture and taking hostages in Afghanistan between 1991 and 1996, whose crimes were labelled “merciless”, and “such ‘an affront to justice’ that they should be tried in any country.94 However, the overall record of exercising the unique and vital measure of universal jurisdiction against suspected torturers is widely and shamefully disregarded, and one cannot help but conclude that torturers are thus often allowed to go free in order that States avoid undesirable diplomatic consequences. 2. Prevention – Visiting bodies under the OPCAT 156. Articles 2 and 16 CAT contain a general obligation of the 146 States parties to take effective legislative, administrative, judicial and other measures to prevent acts of torture and CIDT in any territory under their jurisdiction. In addition, the CAT contains a number of specific obligations to prevent torture and CIDT, such as the respective training of law enforcement, medical, military and other personnel (article 10) and the systematic review of interrogation practices and prison rules (article 11). Furthermore, as outlined above, international human rights law, including the relevant soft law standards, is very detailed in respect of procedural standards during detention which are aimed at preventing torture and ill-treatment.95 These standards include, as a minimum, the prohibition of all secret and incommunicado detention, the obligation to properly register every detainee from the moment of arrest or apprehension, to keep police custody as short as possible and usually no longer than 48 hours and to move detainees thereafter to a pre-trial detention facility under a different State authority (usually the Ministry of Justice), to grant detainees the right to immediately inform family members of the arrest and to have prompt access to la lawyer, a doctor and an independent judge, to respect the presumption of innocence and the right of detainees to remain silent until properly represented by a lawyer, to properly record interrogations and ensure that confessions extracted by torture are inadmissible before a court, to properly investigate any allegation or suspicion of torture or ill-treatment etc.96 157. The most important method of preventing torture is to replace the paradigm of opacity by the paradigm of transparency by subjecting all places of detention to independent outside monitoring and scrutiny.97 A system of regular visits to places of detention by independent monitoring bodies constitutes the most innovative and effective 92 93 94 95 96 97 40 Ibid., 256. Guengueng et al. v. Senegal, communication No. 181/2001, para 9.7. R V Zardad, High Court judgment of 19 July 2005. The sentencing of Mr. Zardad, a former warlord in Afghanistan who had run a check point at which travellers were frequently abducted and subjected to torture and ill-treatment, was the first successful prosecution under universal jurisdiction laws in the United Kingdom. See also Nowak and McArthur, Article 5, 4.9. See above, II.B.2. See also Amnesty International’s 12 point programme for the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by agents of state, ACT 40/001/2005, 21 April 2005. A/56/156, para 35.