CCPR/C/114/D/2234/2013 2008 and she was placed in the inpatient unit for further observation. By May 2008, her health had improved and she was released to the general population. 4.13 With regard to the possibilities for prisoners to submit statements and complaints, all prisoners can complain to the facility’s administration and members of the procurator’s office. All petitions are registered according to the facts stated therein and a thorough investigation is conducted. There were no obstacles preventing the author from petitioning the administration of the facility or the procurator’s office. All her complaints in that regard are groundless. The instances described in the communication did not occur and could not have occurred. The personnel of the law enforcement agencies acted strictly within the bounds of their professional duties. The penitentiary facilities of Uzbekistan implement in a timely manner measures to prevent the occurrence of any actions that would infringe on the legal rights of individuals who are being held in detention or who have been sentenced to incarceration. If an instance of use of physical force or prohibited treatment is discovered, the guilty parties are strictly disciplined or charged with a criminal act. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations 5.1 On 11 September 2014, the author submits that, in her communication, she has set out a detailed and consistent account of a campaign of persecution by the State party’s authorities directed against her as a result of her human rights activities, which lasted from early 2002 until the author was forced to leave Uzbekistan in March 2009. It involved, inter alia, arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention, torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and a violation of her right to a fair trial. She substantiates her account of these violations with medical and psychological reports, witnesses’ testimonies and copies of court orders, decisions of the authorities dismissing her complaints, judgements and media articles and reports of non-governmental and international organizations, including the United Nations. 5.2 The author submits that the State party’s observations consisted in an outright denial of her allegations and that the State party has not adduced any relevant evidence in support of its account and did not address the evidence submitted by the author. The author notes that the State party chose not to address a number of violations highlighted in her complaint, in particular the lack of access to her family and her lawyers during her imprisonment in the women’s colony in violation of articles 7 and 10 and the violation of articles 17, 19-21 and 26. 5.3 In response to the State party’s denial that the author has been subjected to torture or any other form of ill‐treatment, she provides a detailed account of the different types of persecution to which she was subjected by State officials from 2002 to 2005, ranging from repeated arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention to gang rape, beatings, threats and other forms of torture and of ill-treatment. The author’s account is supported by detailed, consistent and multiple pieces of evidence, including the author’s affidavit in which she identified the perpetrators of her ill‐treatment, a court order of 5 September 2002 to open an investigation against those responsible for the author’s arrest and ill-treatment, photographs of the author’s injuries, media articles and a reference to one of the incidents in the report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment following his mission to Uzbekistan (see A/HRC/7/3/Add.1). 5.4 The State party dismisses the author’s account of her gang rape by three security officers. The author provided a detailed account of the rape in her testimony. In the light of the challenges in documenting acts of rape, particularly rape in detention, the author’s testimony constitutes sufficient evidence. There is no indication that the State party carried out any effective and impartial investigation into the alleged incidents. 9