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Improving the Administrative Response to Allegations of Torture

Compared with the mid-1990s, it is far easier today for victims of torture to bring complaints against alleged perpetrators. However, even when evidence is very strong, convictions of offenders and appropriate sentences are rare. Plaintiffs are often intimidated. Prosecutions of persons accused of torture usually last several years, and sometimes more than a decade. In recent years, a number of serious cases involving torture have exceeded the maximum time period allowed for prosecutions (eight years in one recent case) and as a result the charges were dropped.

The long delay between the actual abuse being committed and the eventual punishment a perpetrator may receive seriously undermines the effort to end torture. Individual officers alleged to have committed abuses are innocent until proven guilty and must be afforded all rights to due process. But when one or more detainees allege torture, this ought to trigger an investigation into the management of the police station in which they were interrogated. The investigation should not be dependent on the outcome of a court case. Unfortunately, at the moment the interior ministry seems content to permit trials to drag on without attempting to find out if there were systemic failings in a particular unit that should be remedied immediately.

The detention of five children in February 2004 provides a good example. The children, ages twelve to sixteen, were detained in the province of Siirt on February 14, 2004, after a protest concerning the imprisonment of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. The children alleged that Siirt police ill-treated them in custody. The police failed to refer the children promptly to the prosecutor after their arrest, as the law requires them to do. There were other serious procedural shortcomings, including the failure to provide copies of medical examination reports to the children or their guardians.

The incident was reported in the press, and the Office of the Prime Minister was presumably aware of the allegations. Two weeks after the arrests, the families had still not been contacted by the Office of the Prime Minister, the interior Ministry or the Ankara police authorities, according to Ms. Vetha Aydin, president of the Siirt branch of the Human Rights Association, and as far as she was aware no steps had been taken to investigate or correct the slack procedures at Siirt Police Headquarters.¹¹

When challenged about its poor administrative response to allegations of human rights violations, such as the Siirt case, the government responds that it will meet this need through its system of provincial and local human rights boards coordinated by the Human Rights Directorate of the Office of the Prime Minister. This network is an ambitious attempt to respond to patterns of violations by providing district boards composed of government and civil society representatives to which citizens can complain if they believe their rights have been violated. Established in 2001, the boards may well perform a useful ombuds role in the future, and could play a useful interim role in monitoring of detention facilities, but as yet they do not offer an effective administrative response to patterns of human rights violations. Their investigations are insufficiently independent and insufficiently searching, judging by their performance on a recent case brought to their attention by Human Rights Watch.

In February 2004, Istanbul police detained A.C., a young male, and questioned him on allegations of auto theft, first at Küçükçekmece Police Headquarters, and later at Gayrettepe Police Headquarters. A.C. reported that he was blindfolded, hosed with water, suspended by the arms, beaten in the genitals, and given electric shocks to the hand, foot and neck. Human Rights Watch raised the case with the Human Rights Directorate of the Office of the Prime Minister. The directorate referred the case for investigation to the Istanbul Provincial Human Rights Board, who in turn referred it to the Küçükçekmece Local Human Rights Board. In spite of the seriousness of the allegations, neither the Küçükçekmece board nor the Istanbul board interviewed the alleged victim, but simply referred the case for investigation by the police—the very unit allegedly responsible for the original abuse.

The Küçükçekmece police chief and the governor examined the case on the basis of a paper file, without speaking to the detainee and concluded that his account was “without foundation.” Istanbul Police Headquarters, on the other hand, did call A.C. in for an interview, but when he and his lawyer arrived for the meeting, they were disturbed to find that the investigation was being carried out by the Anti-Terror Branch. The original case was not terror-related, and anti-terror branches have an alarming reputation for disregarding detainees’ rights and welfare. The CPT has noted, for example, that detainees in anti-terror branches are usually unable to gain access to legal counsel,¹² and that certain forms of ill-treatment were “prevalent” at Istanbul Anti-Terror Branch in particular.¹³ According to the lawyer, the Anti-Terror Branch officers who interviewed A.C. claimed that they had been delegated to investigate the case “for personnel reasons.”

Documents forwarded by the provincial and local boards to the Human Rights Directorate did not mention A.C.’s allegation that he had been denied access to legal counsel. Nor did the documents mention the fact that the man’s father and his lawyer had been denied access to him while in custody at Gayrettepe Police Station. Copies of medical reports carried out after A.C.’s release and consistent with the allegations of ill-treatment were omitted from the documents sent to the directorate. However, the documents did include a standard form informing detainees of their rights, which wrongly stated that detainees held for State Security Court offenses may not speak to a lawyer. Despite the fact that the law was changed to ensure access to legal counsel for all detainees in June 2003, the form is apparently still in use at Küçükçekmece police station.

A.C.’s case demonstrates that currently, human rights boards cannot provide an effective administrative response to allegations of ill-treatment in custody.

Recommendation

Local human rights boards should be supplemented by a much stronger pro-active response from the interior and justice ministries. Allegations of torture that reach the public arena are invariably reported in, for example, the daily bulletin of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, which the Office of the Prime Minister receives. Whenever such well-documented allegations of torture or ill-treatment arise, the relevant ministries should dispatch a team of investigators to establish whether the unit in question is operating in accordance with law and regulations. The team should ensure that officers in the station of concern properly register detainees in the custody book, inform them of their rights, ensure their prompt access to legal counsel, notify their kin, and provide accommodation meeting international standards. Police who fail to carry out these procedures should be disciplined. Such firm action will very quickly alert the entire police and gendarmerie network of the need scrupulously to comply with laws and regulations and encourage them to raise their performance in this area.