159.Furthermore, the members visited Podgorica, Montenegro, where they met with the Acting Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and the Public Prosecutor. While in Montenegro the members also met with NGO representatives and visited two police stations and the Spuž prison (see sect. V below). In view of the fact that the Yugoslav authorities had not exercised power over the territory of Kosovo since the establishment there of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in 1999, the Committee felt that it was advisable not to include Kosovo in the visit. 160.The Federal and Republican authorities were supportive of the visit and very cooperative. The members visited prisons and places of detention without prior notice and talked in private with detainees. The only difficulty encountered by the members was related to the interviews with pre-trial detainees. By law, such interviews had to be approved by the respective investigating judges, a rule that applied to any person wishing to meet a pre-trial detainee. Unfortunately, the members had not been informed of this requirement before arriving in the country. In the end, the necessary authorizations were obtained and the members were able to interview some pre-trial detainees. However, the Committee members would have wished that the State party had made the necessary arrangements beforehand, so as to avoid delays in their programme of work. III. FINDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE WITH RESPECT TO SERBIA 161.The widespread use of torture under the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic has been extensively documented by national and international NGOs, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia of the Commission on Human Rights and OSCE. Direct testimonies and information from governmental and non governmental sources received by the members prior to and during their visit to Serbia confirmed the reliability of the information contained in those reports and the assessment that torture was systematically used during the Milosevic regime, mainly for political reasons. A considerable amount of information in this respect is contained in the Committee’s files and excerpts were transmitted to the State party. 162.The information collected by the members during their visit to Serbia and Montenegro showed that the characteristics and frequency of torture changed completely after October 2000, under the new political regime. Their findings in this respect are based mainly on testimonies obtained from persons at liberty claiming to have been tortured or ill-treated, detainees, NGOs, prison doctors, law enforcement personnel, government officials and members of the judiciary. A.Information obtained through interviews with alleged victimsand visits to places of deprivation of liberty 163.The Committee members interviewed two persons at liberty who alleged that they had been tortured while they were in detention. They also conducted private interviews with 40 persons deprived of their liberty. The interviewees were selected from among those who had arrived most recently in the places of detention that were visited. Some were selected on the basis of medical records kept in those places for the months preceding the visit. Ten interviewees stated that they had been treated in a way that the Committee members considered could fall within the definition of torture contained in article 1 of the Convention. 164.At each prison and police station visited, the Committee members examined the log books which, in general, were well kept. At the police stations, the members looked at the rooms used for interrogation and the cells in which detainees were held. Although the visit was not intended to focus on the material conditions of detention, the members could not help being struck by some of those conditions. For example, the cells in most of the police stations were unlit, unventilated, unfurnished and lacked acceptable sanitation facilities. As for the conditions in prisons, the members noted that the time allowed for daily outdoor exercise by remand prisoners was far too short (about half an hour). The rest of the day prisoners stayed in their cells without being offered any purposeful activities. Some were even kept in solitary cells for long periods. Furthermore, there seemed to be no system of inspection by independent experts of conditions of imprisonment. Prisoners wishing to file complaints could only do so by writing to the Ministry of Justice. The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, which had recently been allowed to visit some prisons, told the members of the Committee that such complaints remained largely unanswered. 165.As a whole, the members of the Committee got the impression that the situation in prisons had improved significantly since October 2000 and that the authorities had been successful in reforming staff practices, retaining only those staff members who were committed to appropriate behaviour. That impression was confirmed by the testimonies of the prisoners themselves. 1. Prisons Belgrade Central Prison 166.A Committee member with medical expertise examined the medical records of 70 pre trial detainees who were under the jurisdiction of the Belgrade District Court. Fifty five of them contained no indications of ill-treatment or physical violence by the police. In the remaining 15 records (representing 21 per cent), it was noted that the detainees had alleged having been beaten by the police. In six of them (representing approximately 9 per cent of the total number of records examined) marks had been found and were described by the examining doctor. Furthermore, the prison doctor told the members that approximately one third of the prisoners bore lesions upon their arrival, though the lesions were not necessarily due to ill treatment by the police. Where the prisoners (about 10 per cent of them) alleged having been beaten by the police, the lesions were generally light, such as bruises. The allegations made by the prisoners were always reflected in their medical records. The doctor also indicated that there were no cases of inmates being beaten by the prison guards, although such cases had been frequent in the past. 167.The Committee members also interviewed 21 pre-trial detainees, some of whom were selected on the basis of the medical records examined. All of them were charged with common crimes. Nine of them reported having been beaten or subjected to other forms of torture by the police in order to obtain confessions. Sremska Mitrovica Prison