34 OTHMAN (ABU QATADA) v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT within the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), to extract confessions in the course of routine criminal investigations. Given that these two facilities were the ones most often cited as the two most notorious torture centres in Jordan, on the basis of all the evidence gathered, the denial of the possibility of assessing these allegations by means of private interviews with detainees in GID, and taking into account the deliberate attempts by the officials to obstruct his work, the Special Rapporteur confirms that the practice of torture is routine in GID and CID... Moreover, in practice the provisions and safeguards laid out in Jordanian law to combat torture and illtreatment are meaningless because the security services are effectively shielded from independent criminal prosecution and judicial scrutiny as abuses by officials of those services are dealt with by special police courts, intelligence courts and military courts, which lack guarantees of independence and impartiality.” 110. In this context, the Rapporteur also found : “57. The Special Rapporteur reports that no ex officio investigations are undertaken even in the face of serious injuries sustained by a criminal suspect; not one official could demonstrate to the Special Rapporteur serious steps taken to investigate allegations, including at the very least the prompt and timely medical documentation of injuries sustained by detainees... 60. Paradoxically, while law enforcement officials maintain that torture allegations are unheard of within their institutions, the Court of Cassation has overturned a number of convictions on the grounds that security officials had obtained confessions from defendants under torture. Regrettably even these findings do not spur any official investigations into wrongdoings by officials and none of the security officials involved in these cases have ever been brought to justice. 61. What is more, the decisions and rulings of the Court of Cassation related to cases where criminal suspects are prosecuted under special courts are at the same time cited by government officials to defend the system, pointing to the existence of independent oversight in the form of appeals of special court decisions to the Court. 62. However, with respect to the question of impunity and the prosecution by special courts of police or intelligence officers for torture or ill-treatment, no evidence has been produced to indicate examples of where special court acquittals of police officers have been successfully appealed to the Court of Cassation, if appealed at all. 63. This leads to the conclusion that impunity is total. The special court system does not work effectively at all. The absence of a crime of torture in accordance with article 1 of the Convention against Torture is only part of the problem. At the heart of it lies a system where the presumption of innocence is illusory, primacy is placed on obtaining confessions, public officials essentially demonstrate no sense of duty, and assume no responsibility to investigate human rights violations against suspected criminals, and the system of internal special courts serves only to shield security officials from justice. (footnotes omitted)” 111. The Rapporteur recommended the introduction of a series of basic safeguards for detainees, including better rules governing the admissibility of confessions. He also recommended the abolition of the State Security Court.