49 iii) abolish and criminalise secret detention: ‘[a]ny evidence obtained from detainees in unofficial places of detention and not confirmed by them during subsequent interviews at official locations ought to be inadmissible in court’;262 iv) introduce legislation which prevents confessions from being the sole basis upon which a guilty verdict may be secured and exclude from proceedings confessions made to police and other non-judicial officers, or taken without the presence of the detainee’s lawyer,263 for example, the Special Rapporteur encourages that: ‘If doubts arise about the voluntariness of a person’s statements, as when no information about the circumstances of the statement is available or when pursuant to arbitrary, secret or incommunicado detention, the statement should be excluded regardless of direct evidence or knowledge of abuse’;264 v) exclude confession evidence stemming from interrogations that was not voice or video recorded, and prohibit the use of hooding or blindfolding in interrogations;265 ‘The study found that, when detention safeguards are applied in practice, this has the highest correlation with the reduction of torture […] Among all measures, abstaining from unofficial detention and the implementation of safeguards in the first hours and days after arrest are the most important means for preventing torture […] The study also highlights the positive impact of reducing reliance on confession evidence in criminal proceedings: ‘When police investigators make use of alternative forms of evidence, and the judicial process insists they do, the motive for, and risk of, torture decline’’.267 There is also emerging evidence of a slowly developing state practice in several of the recommended areas, including the elimination of confessions as a sole source to secure a conviction (discussed above); the recording of interviews;268 and the right to information on rights, including the right to silence.269 At a regional level, too, there are developments linking the admissibility of confessions with the protection of procedural safeguards for suspects. For example: i) In Europe, domestic criminal procedure laws have been changing to exclude reliance on evidence obtained in the absence of a lawyer, pursuant to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Salduz v Turkey.270 In Salduz, the European Court of Human Rights established the general rule that access to a lawyer should be afforded to a suspect from the first interrogation by police. Failure to abide by this requirement would render as unfair any trial in which incriminating statements made in the absence of a lawyer are used for a conviction. ii) The Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance in Africa state that any confession or admission made during incommunicado detention should be considered as having been obtained by coercion and, accordingly, must be excluded from evidence.271 vi) ensure that all accused persons are informed of the right against self-incrimination;266 and vii) introduce a clear procedure to test a confession for signs of torture. There is a growing recognition that some of the most important torture prevention mechanisms are the safeguards that should be applied in the first hours and days after a person is taken into custody. This was a key conclusion of a major independent study commissioned by the Association for the Prevention of Torture and undertaken by Oxford Brookes University to assess the impact of torture prevention measures undertaken over a thirty-year period: 226 Nowak and McArthur, The United Nations Convention Against Torture, pp. 534-535, 572. 227 UN ONHCR, Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment, Juan Ernesto Mendez, 5 August 2016, A/71/298, para 99. 228 ‘Confess and be done with it: Almost everyone accused of a crime in Japan signs a confession, guilty or not’, Economist, 8 February 2007. 229 Hanna Kozlowska, ‘Japan’s notoriously ruthless criminal justice system is getting a face lift’, Quartz, 26 May 2016. 230 UN ONHCR, Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment, Juan Ernesto Mendez, para 11. 231 Criminal Procedure Code (2015), Article 98. 232 Criminal Procedure Law (2012), Article 53: ‘a defendant cannot be found guilty and sentenced to criminal punishments if there is no evidence other than his/her own statement’. 233 Gunes v Turkey, App no. 28490/95 (ECtHR, 19 June 2003). 234 Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Acara Pidana (KUHAP) (1981), Article 189(4).