III. FINDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE WITH RESPECT TO SERBIA 161. The widespread use of torture under the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic has been extensively documented by national and international NGOs, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia of the Commission on Human Rights and OSCE. Direct testimonies and information from governmental and non-governmental sources received by the members prior to and during their visit to Serbia confirmed the reliability of the information contained in those reports and the assessment that torture was systematically used during the Milosevic regime, mainly for political reasons. A considerable amount of information in this respect is contained in the Committee’s files and excerpts were transmitted to the State party. 162. The information collected by the members during their visit to Serbia and Montenegro showed that the characteristics and frequency of torture changed completely after October 2000, under the new political regime. Their findings in this respect are based mainly on testimonies obtained from persons at liberty claiming to have been tortured or ill-treated, detainees, NGOs, prison doctors, law enforcement personnel, government officials and members of the judiciary. A. Information obtained through interviews with alleged victims and visits to places of deprivation of liberty 163. The Committee members interviewed two persons at liberty who alleged that they had been tortured while they were in detention. They also conducted private interviews with 40 persons deprived of their liberty. The interviewees were selected from among those who had arrived most recently in the places of detention that were visited. Some were selected on the basis of medical records kept in those places for the months preceding the visit. Ten interviewees stated that they had been treated in a way that the Committee members considered could fall within the definition of torture contained in article 1 of the Convention. 164. At each prison and police station visited, the Committee members examined the log books which, in general, were well kept. At the police stations, the members looked at the rooms used for interrogation and the cells in which detainees were held. Although the visit was not intended to focus on the material conditions of detention, the members could not help being struck by some of those conditions. For example, the cells in most of the police stations were unlit, unventilated, unfurnished and lacked acceptable sanitation facilities.1 As for the conditions in prisons, the members noted that the time allowed for daily outdoor exercise by remand prisoners was far too short (about half an hour). The rest of the day prisoners stayed in their cells without being offered any purposeful activities. Some were even kept in solitary cells for long periods. Furthermore, there seemed to be no system of inspection by independent experts of conditions of imprisonment. Prisoners wishing to file complaints could only do so by writing to the Ministry of Justice. The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, which had recently been allowed to visit some prisons, told the members of the Committee that such complaints remained largely unanswered. 165. As a whole, the members of the Committee got the impression that the situation in prisons had improved significantly since October 2000 and that the authorities had been successful in reforming staff practices, retaining only those staff members who were committed to appropriate behaviour. That impression was confirmed by the testimonies of the prisoners themselves. 71