A/HRC/28/68/Add.4 44. As a result, confessions made by detained persons are signed by an “independent witness”. This is an inadequate legal protection and meaningless as to the voluntary nature of the statement. The use of an “independent witness” rather than legal counsel does not protect against forced confessions but, rather, lends them a veneer of legality. Confession statements 45. In general, it appears that suspects are informed by the arresting or interrogation officer about their right to a lawyer. However, if a suspect cannot afford a lawyer or the offence is not serious enough to warrant a legal aid lawyer, the National Intelligence Agency or the police proceed to the interrogation stage and “persuade” (using force or intimidation) the individual to give a statement, which, in practice, occurs in the vast majority of cases. 46. Torture in the pretrial period is used to break down the individual and obtain information. In some cases, individuals are severely beaten by men in plain clothes, believed to be from the National Intelligence Agency, specifically to extract confessions. These confessions are routinely submitted and accepted as evidence before the criminal and military courts. 47. The Gambian criminal legal system is based on common law and so a “voir dire” (trial within a trial) is conducted each time there is a complaint or reason to believe that a statement against interest was not freely made. The burden is on the prosecution to prove that it was not coerced. After conducting a voir dire, the admission of a confession as evidence before the court is at the discretion of the judge. Judicial discretion to admit evidence tainted by torture, of any kind, is a violation of the exclusionary rule laid down in article 15 of the Convention against Torture, a standard also required by customary law. 48. The Solicitor-General and Director of the Prosecutions Office assured the Special Rapporteur that confessions alone were not sufficient evidence for a conviction, as other corroborating evidence was needed. That is a welcome safeguard but insufficient to deter torture in practice. International law obligations require the exclusion of confessions or declarations obtained under duress, and such confessions or declarations should not be part of case records at all. The Special Rapporteur did not receive information on cases where the voir dire had excluded confessions obtained under torture, nor did he receive statistics as to whether any official had ever been prosecuted or punished for extracting a confession under torture. 49. The Special Rapporteur was alarmed to learn of the reluctance of doctors to examine patients who have allegedly been tortured, because of the threating situation those doctors would find themselves in if subpoenaed to testify. Complaints procedure 50. The Inspector General of Police said that there had been no incidents of officers abusing the rights of suspects and that he had only received one complaint in the past year, which could not be substantiated. The Director General of Prisons advised the Special Rapporteur that prisoners and detainees could transmit complaints to the judicial authorities through their lawyer or relatives. 51. The complaints procedure for allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and the investigation, prosecution and punishment of perpetrators seem to exist in law only. On the basis of the high number of testimonies received, the norm appears to be that victims lack trust and are afraid to allege torture or ill-treatment, and do not complain to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Prisons Service or the court owing to institutional inaction or out of fear of reprisal. There is no effective complaints mechanism to investigate such allegations. 10