E/CN.4/1990/17 page 70 with the courts of lower instance if he is held by a civilian authority (art. 182). The Special Rapporteur was informed that a petition for habeas corpus must, in order to be admissible, contain the name of the person, the identity of the detaining authority and the presumed date of detention. The president of the court can initiate the proceeding. Whether the writ of habeas corpus will be granted has to be decided by the court in plenary. When the petition is filed with the Supreme Court, all nine members of the Court (or their alternates) have to be present; no unanimity, however, is required. 231. In case the requirements for the filing of a petititon for habeas corpus cannot be met, it is the duty of the Prosecution Division of the Office of the Attorney-General to start an investigation to determine whether a person has been detained illegally or is suffering ill-treatment, torture, illegal exactions or coercion; to denounce the facts to the competent authority so that the person in question may be delivered and to demand the application of the appropriate sanctions (article 20 (4) of the Lev Organica de la Procuraduria General de la Republica of 1961). The functions of the Prosecution Division are carried out by the Office of the Attorney-General and by the prosecutors of the judiciary bodies (article 21 of the Ley Organica). Violation of the rules with regard to arrest and detention, including the practice of torture during this detention, will, according to article 333 of the Penal Code, be punished with two to five years' imprisonment. 232. If a person claims to have been subjected to torture the judge may order the Department of Forensic Medicine to examine him in order to ascertain whether the allegation is justified. 233. In Honduras the police forms an integral part of the armed forces. Law enforcement is entrusted to the Fuerza de Seguridad Publica (FSP) (article 161 of the Constitutive Law of the Armed Forces). The FSP has a plain-clothes investigative division, the Direccion Nacional de Investigaciones (DNI). Most of the alleged human rights violations were attributed to FSP and DNI. 234. The Special Rapporteur was informed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces that, formerly, the police were functioning under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. Since the police were used by the political party in power to further that party's political goals, it was decided, after a coup d'etat in 1963, to merge the police with the army in order to give it an apolitical character. 235. According to Honduran law (article 90 (2) of the Constitution), members of the armed forces are to be tried by military tribunals if they have violated the law. Article 91 of the Constitution (reiterated in article 35 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and article 235 of the Constitutive Law of the Armed Forces), however, rules that in case a member of the armed forces has committed a crime against a civilian or a military person who is not in active service, a civil court will be competent to try the case. In actual practice, however, members of the armed forces are never tried by civilian tribunals. The Special Rapporteur has noted that article 91 is interpreted differently by the civilian courts and by the armed forces. According to the President of the Supreme Court civilian courts are always competent if a military and a civilian are involved. All human rights violations committed by members of the armed forces against a civilian should come, therefore, before a civilian