CAT/C/UZB/CO/5 (b) Ensure that all victims of gender-based violence, including domestic violence, have access to medical and legal services, including counselling, redress and rehabilitation, as well as to shelters throughout the country; (c) Amend its legislation to include marital rape, a form of domestic violence, as a specific crime in the criminal code entailing ex officio prosecutions; (d) Ensure that all cases of gender-based violence against women and girls are thoroughly investigated, that the alleged perpetrators are prosecuted and, if convicted, are punished appropriately, and that the victims receive redress, including adequate compensation; (e) Monitor the effectiveness of complaints mechanisms, including the domestic violence hotline; (f) Provide mandatory training for police and other law enforcement officials, prosecutors, judges, and social and medical workers on how to identify and effectively protect victims of gender-based violence, including domestic violence; (g) Compile statistical data, disaggregated by the age and ethnicity of the victims and their relationship to the perpetrator, on domestic, sexual and other forms of violence against women, including marital rape, and on the number of complaints, investigations, prosecutions and convictions of perpetrators and sentences handed down. Forced renditions and extraditions 57. The Committee is concerned at reports that national security officers have continued to engage in secret renditions from abroad and that many of the persons abducted or forcibly returned have been subjected to incommunicado detention, including in undisclosed locations, and have allegedly been tortured and ill-treated in order to obtain confessions to crimes or to incriminate others. In this regard, the Committee is concerned that the State party has secured the return of 542 individuals labelled as opponents between January 2015 and July 2016, through extradition proceedings or otherwise, including the reported use of diplomatic assurances (arts. 2, 3, 5–7 and 16). 58. The State party should ensure that independent monitors can conduct confidential visits with all persons who have been the subject of an international transfer to Uzbekistan and that such persons have access to effective complaints mechanisms. It should also ensure that the trials of all persons who have been forcibly returned to Uzbekistan respect international human rights standards and that such persons are able to enjoy, from the very outset of their deprivation of liberty, all fundamental legal safeguards as set out in paragraphs 29 and 30. Safeguards on non-refoulement 59. While noting the presidential decree on the approval of the regulation on the procedure for granting political asylum of May 2017, which provides a legal avenue to seek asylum in the State party, the Committee is concerned that there are no other national mechanisms governing the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in the State party and that limited information is available concerning the implementation of the presidential decree (arts. 2, 3, 12, 13 and 16). 60. The State party should collect and publish data on the implementation of the presidential decree with regard to the procedure for granting political asylum; take measures to establish a comprehensive national asylum system that is in conformity with international standards and which provides all individuals under the State party’s jurisdiction with an in-country right to appeal an expulsion order in order to determine whether there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be at risk of being subjected to torture; and establish an early detection system for victims of torture and ill-treatment. It should seek the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in taking these measures and should consider ratifying the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. 14