A/HRC/13/39/Add.3
cases, to violence.
The same is true for pretrial detention and custody facilities. The pretrial facilities of
the Ministry of the Interior, the Committee of National Security and the Ministry of Justice
seem to have undergone improvements in terms of physical conditions and food supply;
however the almost total denial of contacts with the outside world, often for prolonged
periods, clearly contradicts the principle of the presumption of innocence and puts
disproportional psychological pressure on suspects.
On the basis of discussions with public officials, judges, lawyers and representatives
of civil society, interviews with victims of violence and with persons deprived of their
liberty, the Special Rapporteur concludes that the use of torture and ill-treatment certainly
goes beyond isolated instances. He received many credible allegations of beatings with
hands and fists, plastic bottles filled with sand, police truncheons, and of kicking,
asphyxiation with plastic bags and gas masks used to obtain confessions from suspects. In
several cases, these allegations were supported by forensic medical evidence.
With regard to the legal framework and safeguards, the Special Rapporteur
welcomes the fact that torture has been criminalized, even if the current definition needs to
be brought fully into line with the Convention against Torture, and that safeguards are, by
and large, provided for by the legislation and formally respected. In order for the
safeguards to be effective, however, the various players in the criminal justice cycle must
live up to their responsibilities, close the implementation gap and denounce cases of
torture, which is currently not the case.
In the light of the above, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government
of Kazakhstan implement fully its obligations under international human rights law. In
particular, he urges the Government to create an independent and effective national
preventive mechanism with the necessary human and other resources and to view it as an
ally in the collective effort to discover what really happens in places where people are
deprived of their liberty. He also recommends that the penitentiary system be conceived in
a way that truly aims at the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. Complaints
mechanisms need to be made accessible and credible; a mechanism to investigate promptly
and impartially allegations of torture and ill-treatment should be put in place and be
independent of the alleged perpetrators; the de facto time of apprehension should be
recorded and terms of police custody reduced to international standards; temporary
detention isolators should be transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of
Justice; and the burden of proof to show that a confession has not been extracted by torture
should be transferred to the prosecutor.
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