A/HRC/28/68/Add.4 beatings by fists or blunt instruments and in which the injuries showed treatment amounting to torture (or consistent with allegations of torture). 32. The methods of torture include very severe beatings with hard objects or electrical wires; electrocution, including in the genital area; asphyxiation by placing a plastic bag over the head and filling it with water; cigarette burns; tying up with ropes; and burning with hot liquid. One victim recounted how he had had to dig his own grave and had been made to believe he would be buried alive.11 Such torture was generally inflicted over a period of days or even weeks, usually either at National Intelligence Agency headquarters or in other unofficial places of detention. Death penalty 33. The Special Rapporteur has many concerns regarding the executions of nine persons in 2012.12 Of particular relevance to his mandate is that one of the individuals was mentally impaired and therefore executed in disregard of international law provisions prohibiting the imposition or performance of the death penalty on a person with a mental or psychosocial disability. The mandatory imposition of the death penalty, for any offence, is a clear violation of international law.13 34. In 2012, the President reinstated a conditional moratorium on the death penalty, dependent on the rise or fall of the crime rate. The uncertainty that such a measure presented to those on death row, and to their families, amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Death-row and life-term prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the security wing of Mile 2 Central Prison. They are held in small, overcrowded, dark and poorly ventilated cells and denied educational or recreational activities, except for 10 minutes of exercise per day. As at March 2014, there were at least 43 people on death row who were routinely denied visits by lawyers or family. 14 2. Prisons service 35. According to the Prisons Act, the overall responsibility for correctional facilities, the implementation of judicial decisions and the treatment of prisoners lies with the Ministry of the Interior. 36. The Special Rapporteur was denied access to the security wing of Mile 2 Central Prison and an inference has to be made that there was something to hide there. The security wing holds “high-security” detainees, in addition to those detainees sentenced to death or to life terms. High-level officials said that no one except a few government authorities had access to the security wing. This isolation is explained by the serious nature of the crimes that the detainees have reportedly committed. Some of those detained in the security wing have judicial appeals pending and must be presumed innocent, while some are awaiting trial and should be in the remand wing. In any event, this extreme isolation is an added layer of cruelty for those serving a sentence. 11 12 13 14 8 Ibid. See Gambia Human Rights Network, report submitted ahead of the universal periodic review of the Gambia, 2014. Available from http://gainako.com/?p=4785. Article 6, paragraph 1, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and customary law. See Amnesty International, submission for the universal periodic review of the Gambia, p. 4. Available from www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR27/004/2014/en/.