Activities during the period 1 August 2012 to 31 July 2013
Visits
1. The CPT organised 21 visits totalling 164 days during the twelve-month
period covered by this General Report, which constitutes a notable increase
in the Committee’s activities as compared to the previous year (during which
18 visits totalling 146 days were organised).
Eleven of the visits (totalling 101 days) formed part of the CPT’s annual programmes of periodic visits for 2012 and 2013, and ten (63 days) were ad hoc
visits which the Committee considered were required by the circumstances.
The precise dates of each of these visits and a list of the places of deprivation of
liberty visited by the CPT’s delegation are provided in Appendix 7.
2. The above-mentioned development of the CPT’s activities over the last
twelve months has in large part been made possible by a more favourable situ
ation within the Committee’s Secretariat. The CPT trusts that this situation can
be maintained (see also paragraphs 91 to 93).
Periodic visits
3. The eleven periodic visits were carried out to Croatia, Greece, Hungary,
Iceland, Lithuania, Monaco, Montenegro, Poland, San Marino, Turkey and the
United Kingdom. The last-mentioned visit was in large part focused on Scotland,
which had not been visited by the CPT since 2003.
4. In line with the CPT’s usual practice, the situation in a wide range of places
of deprivation of liberty was examined during each periodic visit. Naturally, the
treatment of persons in police custody will always feature prominently in the programme of any periodic visit. In this connection, the Committee’s delegation paid
particular attention, during the June 2013 periodic visit to Turkey, to the treatment
of persons detained in the context of the widespread public demonstrations that
took place in the country in the course of May and June; scores of demonstrators
who had been taken into police custody in Ankara and Istanbul were interviewed.
The treatment of persons detained under immigration legislation was a focus of the
periodic visit to Greece as well as of that part of the visit to the United Kingdom
devoted to England. As regards prison-related matters, health-care services for prisoners were closely examined in several countries (e.g. Greece and Poland) and the
situation of persons serving life sentences or other long prison terms was explored
in detail in Hungary, Lithuania and Turkey. The treatment of residents in social
care facilities was an aspect of the visits to Croatia, Montenegro and San Marino.
Ad hoc visits
5. The ten ad hoc visits carried out by the CPT during the period covered by
this General Report were to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Georgia, Greenland (Denmark), Portugal, the Russian Federation, Turkey,
Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
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