A/HRC/14/44 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ advantage of the earthquake to escape from the national prison in Port-au-Prince and other prisons. In some establishments the prisoners fomented violent mutinies and took the opportunity to escape. Several dozen of the escapees were recaptured by the National Police and UNPOL, but most of them are still at large. Some of them are said to have found refuge in the Cité Soleil quarter, which they used to control, and to have stolen firearms from their warders in the course of their escape. 47. Many of the 3,000 prisoners who escaped from the national prison alone were members of drugs- and arms-trafficking gangs from Cité Soleil, and many judicial documents seem to have been destroyed in the post-earthquake chaos. Little is left of the files of the national prison, where traces of fire were found in a cell; this circumstance increases the risk of unfair treatment of detainees by the justice system 48. The Palace of Justice in Port-au-Prince, which collapsed on the day of the earthquake, was burned a few days later, with the loss of several hundred current case files. In addition, the files office of the Palace of Justice and the Court of Appeal were looted, as was the office of the clerk of the court of first instance in Port-au-Prince, rendering more than random the processing of the files which had been deposited there. Investigations are proceeding concerning certain members of the prison administration and their possible role in facilitating a number of escapes. 49. Detainees are currently crammed into cells in various prisons and police stations in difficult conditions. Open-air camps have also been set up, in Port-au-Prince in particular, close to Logbase; the inmates of these camps are exposed to public view to the detriment of their dignity. The independent expert recommends that at least canvas sheets should be raised to protect inmates from this exposure. He salutes the work done by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to bring places of detention, in particular the civilian prison in Port-au-Prince, up to international standards. 50. Questions have been raised about the judicial processing of the prisoners recaptured after escaping and about the processing of their cases. Where persons already convicted are concerned, there ought to be other documents available giving the date of conviction, the sentence handed down by the court, and the time left to serve. In the case of prisoners who were already held in pretrial detention or who will be recaptured after escaping, the independent expert recommends that simplified measures should be taken with regard to their offences, thus freeing the judicial system to deal with the cases deemed most serious under Haiti’s Criminal Code. 4. The Office of the Ombudsman 51. The independent expert welcomes the decision taken by President Préval, in agreement with the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies, to appoint Florence Elie to the post of Ombudsman. She had hardly been appointed when she produced an ambitious action plan, but it could not be set in motion owing to the earthquake. Her offices have been affected, and the cracked walls make it dangerous to use the premises or the equipment. With ICRC help she has erected three tents in her garden to continue her work of documenting and processing complaints. Her possibilities for action are limited, at a time when, pursuant to her mandate, she should be conducting investigations and taking part in the discussions in the various “clusters”, especially of the protection issues. 5. The place of human rights in the reconstruction 52. President Préval has repeatedly asserted that the future is not about reconstructing Haiti but about constructing a modern State. This vision was outlined in speech delivered by 12 GE.10-13204 (EXT)