Introduction to Human Rights Week 8: International mechanisms of implementation – 2nd part III. Interview with Jean-Pierre Restellini We have the pleasure to welcome Mr. Jean Pierre Restellini. Mr. Restellini, you are member of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. You have been sitting in this Committee for almost 12 years as full member. Before, you worked for this Committee as an expert on punctual missions. You are also member of the Swiss National Commission for the Prevention of Torture. My first question concerns the composition and the nomination of the members of this Committee. Could you briefly explain how the members of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture are chosen and under which procedure? The composition is quite simple. Indeed, the Convention provides that each member State of the Council of Europe - that is to say the 47 States - has to choose a person within the committee. So, the Commission consists of 47 people. As far as the method of nomination is concerned, things are a little bit more complicated. Indeed, each State Party needs to create a list composed of three names. The list is established by the National Parliament. This list is then given to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. If the Assembly believes that the list is not appropriate, it can refuse it through an ad hoc Commission. It is only during the final lap, if I may say so, when the list is presented to the Committee of Ministers that the latter choses the member who will be part of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. The Convention for the Prevention of Torture consists of two mechanisms: preventive control and the inquiry. What are their respective pros and cons? As far as the inquiry is concerned, it might be useful to remember that the Committee against torture does usually not take special cases into account. Indeed, its interest is in the general conditions of deprivation of liberty and the general interrogation conditions. In theory, investigations should deal with a group of people. Now, it should also be remembered that the duration of the field missions is really short. Indeed, it varies from a couple of days to maximum two or three weeks. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to conduct a real inquiry. In practice, when our Committee - especially the delegation there - decides to pay attention to some facts, either the State in question has already conducted a legal or an administrative investigation - in this case, we ask to see the documents and to think, in order to insure ourselves that the inquiry has been conducted adequately - or, when this was not the case, and because of the brevity of the missions, we formally ask the concerned ministry to open a legal or an administrative inquiry, according to what is the most appropriate by the end of the mission. Is the inquiry frequently used? Absolutely. Preventive control consists in going on the field and speaking to the people deprived of liberty. They are the ones who give us the information that we will then use. Based on the Convention, we then confront these allegations to the documents which are opened to us. We will see if the medical report made when the person entered prison suggests that he/she suffered police violence, considering the marks that we could still see. Finally, we will speak to people who might, according to us, have interesting testimonies in order for the prevention mechanism to be useful. Regarding preventive control, could you tell us how States are chosen and how the Committee selects the institutions that it wants to visit? Well, we have two types of visits. The so-called "periodic visits" whose frequency is unfortunately today of four years. This is very short but the budget we have does not allow us to do more. The other type of visits are ad hoc. In this case, visits are justified by the circumstances. What does it mean? It means that when we have worrying information which make us think that we have to go on the field immediately, we organise an ad hoc visit on the ground of warnings brought to our attention by the press, by NGOs, by the prisoner's parents or even by prisoners themselves. These are the two types of visits. I think that, today, they represent approximately 50% of the visits. In other words, we have 50% of ad hoc visits and 50% of periodic visits. Periodic and ad hoc visits are based on information that reach Strasbourg. These information come from families, from medias or from different observers that we have on the field. Once that the country is chosen, in view of this frequency, we will try to target the institutions such as psychiatric hospitals which need to be visited as a priority by our Commission. Again, we will of course choose them after studying different documents available to us. What happens if a State refuses to welcome the Committee for the Prevention of Torture or if it refuses to open the door of an institution that the Committee would like to visit? You are referring to Article 9 of the Convention. This Article allows a State to refuse a visit. Nevertheless, conditions in which the State can refuse a visit are precisely defined. It concerns public security. To date, if I remember correctly, Article 9 was only used three or four times in 22-23 years of activity. Fortunately, it is quite rare. When the Convention entered in force, many feared that several States would use Article 9 to prevent us from having a look at what needed to be controlled. It did not happen. In my opinion, Article 9 was only used in few necessary circumstances. The first opposition came from the Russian authorities. At the time, we had decided to go to Chechnya. It was in 1999. When we wanted to go there, the fighting were raging in Grozny. We could not have worked correctly and we would have exposed ourselves to significant dangers. Could you tell us how the visits are conducted? We adopted a strategy that we are trying to follow in most of the cases. Our policy is first to have a conversation with the person in charge of the institution, whether it is a prison, a police station, a psychiatric hospital or a center for refugees. Out of politeness, we are first going to try to get the official version. We are first asking some information on the institution's background and on its current prisoners or mentally ill patients - if it is a psychiatric hospital - and then we are asking material questions: questions on the access to lawyers, to walks and to showers. We are then ending on a very important subject: "Mr. Director, what are your most important concerns, right now?" It gives us an idea of the institution's temperature. Then, a delegation of about 3 to 6 people often splits up into two subdelegetions. We split up into different groups and one of them will come down, if I may say so because it is really the appropriate word, on the newcomers, especially the people who arrived within 15 days before our visit. The medical examiner that I am reminds you that there is no chance to see haematomas after 15 days. It is obviously very precious for us if we can notice the presence of haematomas. It is important to be quick because some visits can take a few days and the marks can disappear in a few days. That is what we will do. As a doctor, I will rather turn my attention to how the medical service works. I will especially try to know in detail how my colleague prison doctor conducts the medical examination and if he makes some time for the prisoner to freely say that he has been victim of ill-treatment or of torture. I will then try to know if these allegations are followed by a concrete physical examination. Here, there is a problem: these examinations are often conducted in the presence of guardians and/or of the police. You can imagine what the consequence is: the prisoner is terrified to say that he was ill-treated by the policemen who go with him. So, the prisoner won't say anything. Quite the opposite: he will say "I fell down the stairs" or "I fell off my bike". I have to ensure that this examination - which is crucial to the following process - is conducted correctly. I also work with my colleagues on the prisoner's interviews. We also discuss with social services and with the chaplaincy, if there is one. Finally, we visit the place. This is always an important moment because, according to the Convention, we cannot miss a single room. In other words, nobody can tell us "you do not go there because this is the place where we keep the files", "here is the place where we keep the brooms". It is very precious. Let me give you an example of something that I experienced a few months ago, I won't tell you where. We entered a prison's disciplinary sector and, on my right, I saw a stairs which led to the upper floor. Under the stairs, there was a kind of small wooden premises. I asked the director what it was and he said "it is here that we keep the brooms". I told him: "All right, I am delighted to know that. Can I have a look?" We opened the door of this premises which was about 1.20 metre high by 1.80 metre. It was a cell. A pedophile prisoner had been imprisoned here for two years. The idea was to protect him from other prisoners. That is why it is extremely important to search everywhere because it is clear that they are not going to show you this type of cells which are not at the institution's glory. Rummage about everywhere. No premises must escape our vigilance. Sometimes, it is even possible that we ask them to open a padlocked closet or drawer. This can happen when there are allegations about policemen using instruments of torture such as devices that send electric shocks and which are hidden in their closets. We are often told: "sorry but this is the policeman's personal drawer. He went on vacations with the keys." Under such circumstances, it already happened many times that we asked to break the padlocks, even if we had to pay the padlocks back no matter if we drew a blank or not. Unfortunately, we often find what we were looking for, that is to say devices to torture. According to you, what is the major contribution of the mechanism for the prevention of torture? I am almost tempted to answer with a joke: it is the prevention of torture. To be honest, I can tell you that I have been working as an expert in the name of Switzerland for 23 years. If I had not the personal conviction that it was useful, I would not have continued. To be honest, it is useful. Not only in the countries which took a hard line on the interrogations, but also in the so-called more civilized countries of the old Europe. Unfortunately, even in a country like Switzerland, there is still a lot to do. I am wondering: how do you determine where the places of detention are in a State that you are visiting? And how to ensure that the people who have been tortured are really in that place of detention? It is an excellent question. The Convention provides that each visited State has to provide us, at the beginning of the visit, all the places of deprivation of liberty, no matter if these places are penal, administrative or civil - that is mainly psychiatric hospitals. When the Convention entered in force in 1989, several States removed from the list the institutions that they did not want us to visit. They did not think that the prisoners would tell us, during the confidential discussions that we had with them: "Have you been in the institution located there in part x or y of the country?" And when we said "no, it does not appear on the list", they often burst out laughing and said "it is not for nothing. It is there that we are being tortured". Many prisoners helped us gathering some information. I insist on telling you that it was not always easy. Indeed, prisoners were often taken to the places of deprivation of liberty where they were tortured blindfolded. So, it was really difficult for them to say where they were going. We questioned them like policemen. We said: "look, you left the original institution blindfolded. Could you tell me more or less which direction you took with the car?" And the person answered "yes, I know because we went past the station. I heard the trains. So, we went North we drove for about an hour." In a city, we drive maximum 60 km in an hour. With a compass, we can already more or less know in which direction we have to go. Then, the person says: "I was taken to a place where we had to climb a number of stairs." Prisoners - especially the ones who belong to political organisations - know very well that it is important to count the number of steps. "Then we went down two floors. There were 48 steps. I could smell coffee. So, a cafeteria or something like a pub must not have been very far. And then we arrived. And this is where it happens." To give you again an illustrative example, we managed - in a country that I won't name - to locate the exact place of torture. When we arrived, we counted and counted again the steps and we arrived in a corridor where there was nothing, except a huge closet which must have weigh about 600 kilos. We thought "this is not possible. It must be the place." We called the chief of police and we asked him to move the furniture. He got angry and said "it is an insult to my country. You are not trusting me." We moved the furniture and there was a door. And there were 70 prisoners who had all been severely tortured. To show you how crucial it is do this kind of work. Unfortunately, it is also possible that, even though we have the exact address of the place where things can happen, the police forces or the secret services often listen to us. Our phones are tapped so we need to be strategic in order to try not to be followed to much. Sometimes, they manage to know that we will go there the next day or two days after. In this case, they sometimes smuggle prisoners they do not want us to see. Many times, we had to drive ten or even hundred kilometres to find the prisoners who had been put in trucks during the night and sent 500 kilometers away. In this case, we examine the prison register. It happened that in a prison where, according to the prison register, there were 350 people, 75 were missing. We go to see the director and we tell him "Mr. Director, it is a bit odd, 75 prisoners are missing. Where are they?" At the beginning, the director gave us a silly answer, he said he did not know. It is a bit strange for a prison governor not to know where a quarter of the prisoners are. Our reaction was - and it is often the case - to say: "look, it is very simple. If you do not find these 75 people in the next two hours, we will make the assumption that you executed them all in a non-legal manner. Suddenly, we remember "oh yes maybe that..." and we manage to find them. You can guess that the people we find are often the ones who have been the most severely ill-treated. We would be interested in knowing: once the job done, how do the directors or the authorities react when they receive the report of your investigations? The reactions are various. The worse situation is when the responsible person, the responsible of the national police or even the Minister say that it is not true. "It is not true. You are exaggerating." Fortunately, it is rare. Today, we know that we cannot object such things to the experience of a Commission like ours, which has more than 20 years of experience and is known for having a certain authority. What happens quite often is quite the opposite. I for example remember the Rumanian Minister of the armed forces. When we went to see him for the first time and that we inspected disciplinary blocks for young Rumanian soldiers, he was stupefied and said - in good faith: "I did not know that such things happened in my country, in my own ministry." And he was very happy that we could bring him some concrete information. Indeed, his hierarchy was very careful not to mention these kind of things. Some leaders are also aware that these kind of visits can be useful to them. This is for example the case when we visit a completely ruined prison and that the director suffers from these unacceptable material conditions. I can assure you that most of the prison governors are far from being torturers. Quite the opposite, these people are trying to make sure that the "clients" are well treated. They are therefore delighted when we write in our reports that the way that the people are deprived of liberty in this or that institution, the access to showers, the food, the heating are unacceptable. Because, when the report comes to the ministerial level, they feel quite at ease to say that even the international experts consider that the situation is not acceptable.
