Spain must end incommunicado detention | Amnesty International

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15 September 2009

Spain must end the practice of incommunicado detention as it violates the rights of people deprived of their liberty, said Amnesty International in a report published on Tuesday.

"It is inadmissible that in present day Spain anyone who is arrested for whatever reason should disappear as if in a black hole for days on end. Such lack of transparency can be used as a veil to hide human rights violations," said Nicola Duckworth, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director.

In its report, Out of the shadows: End incommunicado detention in Spain, Amnesty International illustrates how Spain has one of the strictest detention regimes in Europe which is in breach of the country's obligations under international human rights law.

Spain's law of criminal procedure allows for a detainee to be held incommunicado for up to five days in all cases and for up to 13 days if suspected of terrorism-related offences. The 13-day period consists of up to five days of incommunicado detention in police custody, which can be extended by a further five days incommunicado in preventive imprisonment. An additional three days of incommunicado detention may be imposed by a judge at any time during the investigation.

"While held incommunicado, detainees cannot talk to a lawyer or a doctor of their choice. Their families live in stress not knowing what has happened to them and many detainees held incommunicado report that they have been tortured or ill-treated, but such allegations are rarely investigated," Nicola Duckworth said.

"Incommunicado detention denies detainees the right to fair trial. Such detention in itself may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It does not comply with international human rights standards."

International organizations have repeatedly expressed concern about the risk of torture and other ill-treament during incommunicado detention. Such is the case of Mohamed Mrabet Fahsi who was arrested on terrorism-related charges on 10 January 2006 in his home near the city of Barcelona. During his detention incommunicado he was not able to call his own lawyer. Mohammed Fahsi told Amnesty International that he was tortured and ill-treated but both the doctor who examined him and the investigative judge ignored his complaints.

The Spanish government has justified the use of incommunicado detention on grounds of national security and public safety.

"Incommunicado detention must be relegated to the past. No other European Union country maintains a detention regime with such severe restrictions on the rights of detainees," Nicola Duckworth said.

Amnesty International has called on the Spanish authorities to:

• Scrap legislation allowing incommunicado detention;
• Allow all detainees to speak in confidence with a lawyer without police officers present;
• Allow all detainees to have a lawyer of their choice who will be present during questioning;
• Allow all detainees to be examined by a doctor of their choice;
• Allow all detainees to have their families notified of their detention and location;
• Make compulsory in all cases the video and audio recording at places where detainees may be present, except where this may violate their right to private consultations with their lawyer or doctor;
• Investigate promptly, thoroughly and impartially all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment made by detainees.

Spain: Out of the shadows - Time to end incommunicado detention

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Index Number: EUR 41/001/2009
Date Published: 15 September 2009
Categories: Spain

Amnesty International considers that the incommunicado regime in Spanish law is a violation of Spain’s obligations under international human rights law. No other European Union country maintains a detention regime with such severe restrictions on the rights of detainees. The continuing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment demonstrate the grave consequences detention in this regime may have. Amnesty International calls on parliament to abrogate the existing legislation and to ensure the effective protection of the rights of all persons deprived of their liberty.

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Human rights activists under threat in Serbia | Amnesty International

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Journalist Dinko Druhonic has been targeted for criticising neo-fascists

© Front Line/Mark Condren

14 September 2009

Human rights defenders are under attack in Serbia and the authorities are failing to protect them, Amnesty International said on Monday.

Over the past year women human rights activists have faced repeated attacks in the Serbian media including being threatened with lynching.

Such attacks are made by parliamentarians, members of ultra-right organizations and members of the security services indicted for war crimes. Other defenders have had their property destroyed, their offices attacked or been beaten by members of neo-Nazi groups.

"Physical attacks and threats to the lives and property of human rights activists are seldom promptly and impartially investigated by the authorities and few perpetrators are brought to justice," said Sian Jones, Amnesty International’s Balkans expert.

"The lack of political will on the part of the authorities to fulfil their obligations to guarantee human rights defenders their right to freedom of expression and assembly creates a climate of impunity which stifles civil society."

In the briefing Serbia: Human rights defenders at risk Amnesty International reviews the latest attacks against human rights activists, including those against leading women human rights activists.

These defenders include Nataša Kandić, director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, Sonja Biserko of the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, and Biljana Kovačević-Vučo of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM), as well as the women’s NGO Women in Black.

They have been portrayed in the media as anti-Serb for favouring the independence of Kosovo, and for demanding accountability for war crimes committed in the 1990s in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The briefing also focuses on those who defend the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT). Since 2001 the LGBT community in Serbia has been unable to hold a Pride Day parade due to serious threats by right-wing and religious organizations. Such organizations have already made unveiled threats against the organizers of this year’s parade, scheduled for 20 September.

"The LGBT community is marginalized even within civil society and criminal investigations into assaults on LGBT people, even where the perpetrators have been identified, are rarely resolved," Sian Jones said.

"The Serbian authorities are obliged to protect the rights of all people to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. They must condemn publicly all attacks on and threats to human rights activists, and provide protection and support during the forthcoming Belgrade Pride later this week."

Amnesty International calls on the Serbian government to implement in law and in practice the principles of the UN Declaration of Human Rights Defenders, which provides a framework for the protection and support of human rights defenders. The organization also calls on the embassies of EU member states to provide protection and support to defenders in Serbia.

Serbia: Human rights defenders at risk

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Index Number: EUR 70/014/2009
Date Published: 14 September 2009
Categories: Serbia

Human rights defenders (HRDs) In Serbia continue to be at risk from attack by both state and non-state actors, including the media. The Serbian authorities are failing to protect them from physical attacks and threats to their lives and property. Amnesty International is extremely concerned at the impact of these attacks on the rights of HRDs and the rights to freedom of expression and assembly in Serbia.

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Amnesty International Report 2009

Download, buy, or read whole report or selected country reports online from http://thereport.amnesty.org/en/

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Africa

Soldiers wearing red berets travelled 300 kilometres north from the Guinean capital Conakry, to Khoréra, near Boké. They were looking for Karamba Dramé, a youth leader in the town. When they found him, one of the soldiers shot him. He died before he reached hospital on 31 October 2008.

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Americas

The Enxet Indigenous communities of Yakye Axa and Sawhoyamaxa in the Bajo Chaco region of Paraguay have been living at the side of the Pozo Colorado-Concepción highway formore than 15 years. Despite rulings in their favour by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, they remain excluded fromtheir lands. Deprived of their traditional livelihood and way of life, without adequate health care or sanitation, and dependent on irregular government food supplies, they face an insecure present and an uncertain future.

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Asia And The Pacific

On 20 May, in Kawhmu township, near Yangon, the Myanmar authorities prevented desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis from coming out onto the street to beg while punishing people who tried to help them– effectively cutting them off fromany informal assistance. Almost three weeks earlier, the cyclone had devastated much of southern Myanmar, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more from their homes and livelihoods.

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Europe And Central Asia

At the beginning of August 2008, two European states went to war for the first time in almost a decade. Since the conflicts of the early 1990s, Europe had assumed a degree of stability in terms of its economy, security and embedding the rule of law, but these events showed how potentially fragile the security assumptions underpinning post-Cold War Europe could be. And how – as so often – civilians and their human rights pay the price when such assumptions fail.

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Middle East And North Africa

On 27 December, as 2008 drew to a close, Israeli jets launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5million Palestinians live, crowded into one of the most densely populated areas of the planet. In the following three weeks,more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children, and some 5,000 were wounded. Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians.

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