E/CN.4/1999/61/Add.1 page 22 was not granted for prosecution and 137 cases that remained pending. There were no cases in which an officer was sentenced to the maximum term of imprisonment, according to the statistics provided by the Acting Director-General of Security. 76. In an information note transmitted on 11 December 1998, the Government provided the following statistical information on the investigation and punishment of the law enforcement personnel during the period from 1 January 1995 to 31 October 1998. The numbers of law enforcement personnel who were the subject of judicial action under article 243 (torture) and article 245 (ill-treatment) of the Penal Code are 534 and 2,696, respectively; the numbers of law enforcement personnel who were the subject of administrative action, under article 243 and article 245, 396 and 4,508, respectively. 77. Even when prosecution leads to a conviction, the sentences handed down tend to be incommensurate with the gravity of the offence. By way of recent example, in May 1998 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of Beyo—lu Penal Court of First Instance No. 1, which had fined a police chief, Cemalettin Turan, for torturing Yelda Ozcan, a member of the Human Rights Association (IHD), after she was detained by the police in Istanbul on 4 July 1994. The court had sentenced the police chief to three months in prison and suspended him from duty for three months on 26 December 1996. However, the prison term was commuted into a fine amounting to approximately $1.50. 78. The trial on the killing of journalist Metin Göktepe is another, notorious, example of the climate of impunity that prevails in Turkey. Göktepe was beaten to death in detention on 8 January 1996 after his apprehension while trying to cover the funeral of Riza BoybaÕ and Orhan Özen, prisoners who were also beaten to death during an incident in the E-type prison in Ümraniye, Istanbul, on 4 January 1996. Although the authorities first claimed that Göktepe had not been detained, it was later officially accepted that he had been killed in detention as a result of the beatings inflicted upon him. 79. The trial of the 11 police officers who were accused of killing Göktepe began several months later. As is common in such cases, the file of the trial was transferred to provinces outside Istanbul (Aydin and Afyon) for “security reasons”. The accused police officers were arrested in July 1997, but only after extreme public pressure and initiatives by the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic. However, four of the police officers were released from pre-trial detention in September 1997. Six of the police officers accused of murder were eventually acquitted, while the five others were sentenced to seven years and six months in prison on 19 March 1998. The court reduced the sentences from the intended 12 years because of the good behaviour of the defendants during the proceedings. Also, the court held that “it could not be established for certain whether the defendants acted with the intention of killing deliberately”. This decision, however, was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds of “inadequate investigation”. 80. On 20 August 1998, the retrial in connection with the murder of Metin Göktepe began in the Afyon Heavy Penal Court. Immediately prior to the