A/HRC/22/53/Add.2 cigarette lighters and urinated upon. In addition he heard that afterwards victims are dumped in forest areas or ravines or they escape to those places, far from assistance. 25. The Special Rapporteur is also concerned about information received regarding illegal and collective expulsions of hundreds of migrants to Algeria and Mauritania, where they are allegedly subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including by being abandoned in in no-man’s land without further assistance, most frequently near Oujda. Other testimonies suggested that the principle of non-refoulement of persons at risk of torture has not been respected by the Moroccan authorities. B. 1. Safeguards and prevention Access to lawyers 26. Article 23 of the new Constitution provides that a person in custody must benefit, as soon as possible, from legal assistance and the possibility to communicate with relatives, in conformity with the law. The Code of Criminal Procedure allows access to a lawyer after the arrest, upon the authorization of the Prosecutor’s Office, during the first 24 hours for 30 minutes and in the presence of an investigator. Upon request of the investigator the Prosecutor’s Office can delay contact with a lawyer for another 12 hours after the first 24 hours in custody. Testimonies from lawyers indicate that, in practice, they are often denied access beyond the legal time frame. It appears that in the majority of cases, lawyers meet their clients only at the first hearing before the judge. In the procedure provided for under the Anti-Terrorism Act (No. 03-03), police custody can last for three consecutive periods of 96 hours and during that time there is no meaningful right to a lawyer except for the monitored half-hour interview that can occur, at the earliest, at the halfway point of those 12 days. In addition, there is an evident risk that even those terms can easily be violated simply by delaying the registration of the arrest. 2. Evidence obtained under torture, and lack of ex officio investigations 27. Article 293 of the Code of Criminal Procedure states that a confession, like any other evidence, is subject to the discretion of the judge and that any confession obtained by torture is inadmissible. However, the Special Rapporteur learned that courts and prosecutors do not comply with their obligation to initiate an ex officio investigation whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe that a confession has been obtained through the use of torture and ill-treatment, or to order an immediate and independent medical examination (see arts. 74 (8) and 135 (5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure) if they suspect that the detainee has been subjected to ill-treatment. It appears that judges are willing to admit confessions without attempting to corroborate the confession with other evidence, even if the person recants before the judge and claims to have been tortured. In addition, testimonies received indicate that many cases that are submitted to the courts are based solely on confessions by the accused, in the absence of any material evidence. This creates conditions that encourage torture and ill-treatment of suspects. 3. Lack of effective investigation of torture allegations 28. The Special Rapporteur was informed that, often, when defendants try to prove their injuries in court, the judge reacts to these allegations by questioning the credibility of defendants who did not raise the matter at the earliest opportunity—emerging from police custody and appearing for the first time before the prosecutor or the investigating judge. Upon request, the Government provided statistics on the number of investigations against law enforcement officials, including members of the Royal Gendarmerie, judicial police and customs during the period 2009 to 2012. The numbers provided by the Government 8