“(2) If the extraction of a confession or other statement is accompanied by severe violence or if it results in consequences of a serious nature for a defendant in criminal proceedings, the perpetrator shall be punished with a minimum term of imprisonment of four years.” 9 Article 66 of the Serbian Criminal Code states: “A person acting in an official capacity who ill-treats, insults or threatens another in a manner degrading to his human dignity shall be punished with a term of imprisonment of three months to three years.” Similar provisions to those contained in articles 65 and 66 are contained in articles 190 and 191 of the Criminal Code of Yugoslavia of 1976. 10 According to OSCE, the Kosovo Verification Mission had frequent contacts with the Serbian authorities, police commanders and members of the judiciary about reports of torture and ill-treatment. “Generally, the OSCE-KVM was given assurances that all cases of torture and ill-treatment would be followed up and have the legally prescribed disciplinary and judicial consequences for the individual officer responsible. Such action … would, however, only be possible if concrete allegations were made including the name of the officer and the time and location of the alleged offence. When the OSCE-KVM confronted the Chief Prosecutor of Pec and the President of the District Court of Pec with the question as to whether allegations of torture and ill-treatment by police would be actively investigated and prosecuted, the Prosecutor affirmed this, but said that he had never heard of such a case. Concrete action was rendered difficult for several reasons: first, Kosovo Albanians, or other citizens for that matter, who had become victims of torture or ill-treatment by the police, did not trust the State institutions to protect their rights and interests in pursuing legal redress and eventually receiving compensation. Second, in most cases, the identity of the offenders was unknown to the victims and the cooperation of regular police officers in an attempt to identify potential offenders was practically non-existent. And thirdly even if the individual, most often with the active support of the local OSCE-KVM office, … filed a complaint with the local police commander, the consequences for the officer who had abused the complainant were insufficient to dissuade him from repeating the crime …. The near total absence of a response by the judicial authorities to these allegations only served to foster a sense of impunity within the police system, encouraging the continuation and escalation of such human rights violations”. Kosovo, As Seen, As Told, p. 52. 11 The State Prosecutor told the Committee members that he would provide them with statistics on complaints filed under article 65 of the Serbian Criminal Code. At the time of writing the present report, those statistics had not been provided. 12 HLC provided the Committee with information on the case of E.M., a Muslim from Priboj in the Sandjak region who was reportedly taken to a local police station on 19 November 1999 and beaten for several hours while he was being asked about a person he did not know. On 29 December 1999 HLC filed a criminal complaint against unidentified officers of the Priboj police station, charging them with infliction of slight bodily harm. On two occasions HLC asked the municipal prosecutor to disclose the identity of the officers and bring criminal charges against them. The prosecutor responded that, in spite of two requests, the Priboj police authorities had not provided him with the information required to identify the alleged perpetrators. 89