A/HRC/8/3 page 16 (i) Inadequate prosecutions follow commission report 44. Frequently, one of the central purposes of establishing a commission is to investigate and report on the responsibility for alleged abuses. When a commission carries out an effective investigation, it will often be able to recommend directly the prosecution of individuals or to submit evidence to prosecutors for the same purpose. In some cases, arrests follow the submission of a commission report, but the suspects will later be released without being prosecuted.60 Alternatively, prosecutions may follow the commission report, but the sentences handed down are grossly inadequate.61 In other cases, those recommended for prosecution by the commission are never successfully prosecuted, or sometimes never even charged.62 A State attorney-general in Nigeria, for example, told me during my country visit in 2005 that he could recall “no case of prosecutions” following an inquiry in that country, and that their main purpose was just to facilitate a “cooling of the political temperature”.63 In one case, although the Nigerian commission had reported in detail on the identities of those security personnel responsible for serious human rights abuses, not one soldier was subsequently charged or disciplined in any way.64 45. In such cases, all that the commission achieves is a delay, often of many years, of the prospect of adequate prosecution of human rights abuses. In practice, this means that the international community has been deterred from pushing for prosecutions or from calling for the strengthening of regular criminal justice institutions, while the results of the commission are awaited. Once the commission has reported, it will usually be too late for meaningful pressure to be brought and the impetus or incentive for doing so will have greatly diminished in the meantime. 46. A related problem is that evidence is gathered by a commission in such a way as to compromise the possibility of successful subsequent prosecution. In a communication to Israel in September 2005, I wrote that there was no doubt that the Government commission had investigated at length whether the use of lethal force in question had been proportionate. The commission carried out its work for three years and produced an 800-page report, which concluded that, in some cases, the lethal force used had not been justified. During most of the period of the commission’s investigations, those undertaken by the Police Investigations Department were halted by the State prosecutor so that witnesses could testify before the commission without fear of criminal investigation. However, after the commission’s report was released, it was disavowed by the Department on the basis that it was no longer possible to “determine whether the use of lethal force was disproportionate and, if so, who is responsible for 60 E/CN.4/1996/4, para. 425. 61 E/CN.4/2006/53/Add.1, para. 242; E/CN.4/1993/46, paras. 350-353. 62 E/CN.4/2006/53/Add.1, pp. 223-224. 63 E/CN.4/2006/53/Add.4, para. 103. 64 Ibid., para. 67.