A/HRC/7/3/Add.2 page 140 697. According to non-governmental sources, prosecutors often fail to conduct thorough prompt and impartial investigations into allegations of human rights violations or abuses committed by law enforcement personnel and civil servants. Where there are cases reported, investigative procedures remain inadequate and there is little to prevent efforts by law enforcement officials to contaminate or falsify evidence and to pervert the course of the investigation. There is still no independent body to examine complaints of police and gendarmerie abuse. A judicial police under the direction of the prosecutor has been set up but it is unclear that this has improved the investigation process in cases of alleged torture or other ill-treatment. The reluctance of prosecutors to conduct effective, prompt and independent investigations is still evident. Where law enforcement officials are indicted, they tend to be junior officers and there is almost never an examination of chain of command or attempt to hold accountable senior officers. While the zero tolerance for torture policy of the Government is a commendable one, it cannot be an effective strategy until it is accompanied by a policy of “zero tolerance for impunity”. While in the response from the Turkish government summarized in A/HRC/4/33/Add.2, it is repeatedly stated that any complaints will be investigated and action taken, there is still little evidence of a concerted plan of action to put this into effect. 698. In 2007 there has been a rise in reports of police ill-treatment outside places of detention. In a few cases police brutality has resulted in death. This trend was first noted by human rights NGOs in Turkey and, in November 2007, following some particularly striking cases, even began to be reported widely in the Turkish media. 699. Reports of police brutality were on the rise prior to the introduction of new provisions in an old law which entered into effect as the Revised Law on the Duties and Responsibilities of the Police (Polis Vazife Ve Salâhiyet Kanununda Değişiklik yapilmasina Dair Kanun; Law No.5681; accepted by Parliament on 2 June 2007). The law greatly widened the police’s powers of stop and search, and introduced a provision on the use of lethal force similar to that introduced with the revised Law to Fight Terrorism of June 2006. The provision on the use of lethal force fails to impose the restrictions provided for by international standards that stipulate that lethal force is a measure of last resort in cases where it is strictly necessary to protect life. The provisions of the revised police law were strongly criticized by human rights lawyers and domestic human rights NGOs at the time they entered into force and subsequently in light of cases of ill-treatment and police killings in the period after the law had entered into force. NGOs express serious concern that the new law grants law enforcement authorities extended stop and search powers without the safeguard of judicial scrutiny in a context in which there have been regular reports of police ill-treatment and abuse of authority. 700. There are credible reports of cases of police ill-treatment (beating, verbal abuse and threats) outside places of official detention occurring in the course of the routine identity checks permitted in the new law. Those subjected to such ill-treatment are not officially detained and there may remain no record of their encounter with the police. For example, Sinan Tekpetek, a journalist, reported that around 11.30 p.m. on 26 July2007, he was stopped by the police in the Şişhane district of Istanbul, that his identity card was examined (a procedure provided for in the new law), that it was given back and he continued walking. He alleged that he was shortly afterwards stopped by a police car,