A/HRC/4/33
page 5
addendum 3. He expresses his appreciation to the Government for the full cooperation it
extended to him. Consistent and credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment were brought to
the attention of the Special Rapporteur, particularly with respect to the General Intelligence
Directorate (GID) for the purpose of obtaining confessions and intelligence in pursuit of
counter-terrorism and national security objectives, and within the Criminal Investigations
Department (CID) to extract confessions in the course of routine criminal investigations. On the
basis of all the evidence gathered, including the consistency and credibility of the allegations, the
denial of the possibility of assessing these allegations by means of private interviews with
detainees in the GID, taking into account the deliberate attempts by the officials to obstruct his
work in the CID and the forensic evidence obtained, the Special Rapporteur confirms that the
practice of torture is routine in the GID and the CID. With respect to conditions of detention in
prisons and pretrial detention centres, the Special Rapporteur found that the Al-Jafr Correction
and Rehabilitation Centre was in fact a punishment centre, where detainees were routinely
beaten and subjected to corporal punishment amounting to torture. The conditions in other
Correction and Rehabilitation Centres were found to be more humane, although he continued to
receive credible reports of regular beatings and other forms of corporal punishment by prison
officials there. No allegations of ill-treatment were received in the Juweidah (Female)
Correction and Rehabilitation Centre, though he remains critical of the policy of holding females
in “protective” detention, under the provisions of the 1954 Crime Prevention Law, because they
are at risk of becoming victims of honour crimes. The Special Rapporteur concludes that the
practice of torture persists in Jordan because of a lack of awareness of the problem and because
of institutionalized impunity. The heads of the security forces and of the detention facilities he
visited denied any knowledge of torture, despite having been presented with substantiated
allegations. Moreover, in practice the provisions and safeguards laid out in Jordanian law to
combat torture and ill-treatment are meaningless because the security services are effectively
shielded from independent and public criminal prosecution and judicial scrutiny. The fact that
no official has ever been prosecuted for torture under article 208 of the Penal Code underlines
this conclusion. In view of the commitment of the Government to human rights, the Special
Rapporteur is confident that every effort will be made to implement the recommendations in his
report. To this end, the Special Rapporteur welcomes the recent implementation of his
recommendation to close the Al-Jafr Correction and Rehabilitation Centre.
Iraq
7.
The Special Rapporteur recalls that on 1 and 2 July 2006, following his country visit to
Jordan, he met in Amman with Iraqi torture victims and NGOs from different regions of Iraq, as
well as representatives of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) in order to
gather information about the situation of torture there. Meetings were also held by video-link
with representatives of NGOs, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights and UNAMI staff in
Baghdad. Despite widespread and continuing media coverage, the Iraqi NGOs expressed
their frustration at the current situation and appealed for the United Nations and other
international entities to pay greater attention to the human rights situation in Iraq, and for
the urgent intervention that it deserved. The Special Rapporteur expresses his appreciation
for the work being undertaken by UNAMI human rights officers and for the periodic reports
of UNAMI, which have consistently documented the widespread use of torture in Iraq
(e.g. UNAMI, Human Rights Report, 1 July-31 August 2006). He expresses his profound
concern about the dire situation of human rights in Iraq in general and allegations of torture
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