A/HRC/4/33/Add.3
page 2
Summary
The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment undertook a visit to Jordan from 25 to 29 June 2006. He expresses his appreciation
to the Government for the full cooperation it extended to him. The report contains a study of the
legal and factual aspects regarding the situation of torture or ill-treatment in Jordan.
Many consistent and credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment were brought to the
attention of the Special Rapporteur. In particular, it was alleged that torture was practised by
General Intelligence Directorate (GID) to extract confessions and obtain 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. Given
that these two facilities were the ones most often cited as the two most notorious torture centres
in Jordan, on the basis of all the evidence gathered, the denial of the possibility of assessing these
allegations by means of private interviews with detainees in GID, and taking into account the
deliberate attempts by the officials to obstruct his work, the Special Rapporteur confirms that the
practice of torture is routine in GID and 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 both the Siwaqa and the Juweidah (Male) 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 practise 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 all 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 criminal
prosecution and judicial scrutiny as abuses by officials of those services are dealt with by special
police courts, intelligence courts and military courts, which lack guarantees of independence and
impartiality. The fact that no official has ever been prosecuted for torture under article 208 of
the Penal Code underlines this conclusion. Accordingly, he recommends a number of measures
to be adopted by the Government in order to comply with its commitment to prevent and
suppress acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. In view of the clear commitment of the
Government to human rights, the Special Rapporteur is sure that every effort will be taken to
implement his recommendations.