(d) Guarantee free medical care in prisons, ensure the right of prisoners to adequate food in practice, and effectively separate men and women; (e) Immediately end the torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention perpetrated under the responsibility of the traditional chiefs in the north. The Committee notes the delegation’s assurance that proceedings have been brought in such cases and urges the State party to step up its efforts in this direction. The peoples concerned should be duly informed of their rights and of the limits on the authority and powers of these traditional chiefs. 45. The Committee further recommends that the State party should: (a) Adopt, as a matter of great urgency, and ensure the effective implementation of a law establishing the right of all persons held in police custody, during the initial hours of detention, of access to a lawyer of their choice and an independent doctor, and to inform their relatives of their detention. The Committee remarks that any extension of detention in custody ought to be approved by a judge; (b) Abandon the notion, in its draft code of criminal procedure, of extending the period of police custody depending on the distance between the place of arrest and the place of custody, and ensure observance of the time limits on custody in practice; (c) Ensure that detention in custody under the Act on states of emergency conforms to international human rights standards and is not prolonged beyond what the situation requires. The State party should abolish administrative and military custody as options; (d) Systematically organize, as a matter of great urgency, the use of registers in all places of detention; (e) Separate the police from the prison authorities, e.g. by transferring responsibility for prison administration to the Ministry of Justice; (f) Clarify the concept of a “manifestly illegal order”, so that State employees, in particular police officers, members of the armed forces, prison guards, magistrates and lawyers, are clearly aware of the implications. Specific training on this point should be offered; (g) Allow appeals by foreigners against decisions by the administrative court to confirm deportation orders to stay execution. 46. The Committee recommends that the State should greatly increase its efforts to end the impunity of perpetrators of acts of torture, in particular by: (a) Removing all restrictions, notably by the Ministry of Defence, on the prosecution of gendarmes and by giving the ordinary courts jurisdiction to try offences committed by gendarmes in the line of police duty; (b) Pursuing its inquiry into the case of the “Bépanda nine”. The Committee also recommends a thorough investigation of the activities of the Douala operational command while it was in operation and, by extension, the activities of all antigang units that are still functioning; (c) Ensuring that its authorities immediately undertake an impartial investigation whenever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed. The Committee recommends an independent body with the authority to receive and investigate all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of State employees; (d) Ensuring the protection of victims and witnesses against any intimidation or ill-treatment, and by informing the public of their rights, notably with regard to complaints against State employees; (e) Adopting, as soon as possible, and ensuring the practical enforcement of a law making evidence obtained under torture inadmissible in all proceedings. 47. The Committee further recommends that the Cameroonian authorities should: (a) Reform the National Committee on Human Rights and Freedoms with a view to closer conformity to the Principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the “Paris Principles”); (b) Restrict the jurisdiction of the military courts to military offences only; (c) Enact a law banning female genital mutilation; (d) Revise its legislation to end the exemption from punishment of rapists who marry their victims; (e) Consider ratifying the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. 48. The Committee recommends that the present conclusions and recommendations, together with the summary records of the meetings devoted to consideration of the third periodic report of the State party, should be widely disseminated in the country in the appropriate languages. 49. The Committee recommends the inclusion in the next periodic report of detailed information on the current minimum safeguards governing court supervision and the rights of individuals in custody, and on how they apply in practice.