Author:

Sandra Benčić

Centre for Peace Studies, Zagreb

 

 

 

In cooperatiom with:

 

Croatian Helsinki Committee, Zagreb

Centre for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights, Osijek

Citizens Committee for Human rights, Zagreb

 

 

CONTENTS 

   

 

SHADOW REPORT FOR III PERIODICAL REPORT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA REGARDING THE OBLIGATION PURSUANT TO THE ARTICLE 19 OF THE CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT

 

 

SUMMARY

 

Regarding obligations under article 19 of the Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman Or Degrading Treatment Or Punishment, the Republic of Croatia submitted its III Periodical report on the Implementation of the Convention. The reporting period refers to 1997-2000.

 

This Shadow Report covers the gaps in the official report, especially those regarding article 3. of the Convention (the non-refoulment principle), because Croatia has never granted asylum to any individual, although a signatory of this Convention and other related international treaties. Also, the official report covers the above mentioned period of time, the first year of which (1997) there was no special penal law provision on torture.

 

Special attention in the report is given to the fact that there are no official court decisions on torture although there are number of cases that should fall under this description: especially regarding police conduct, but the Attorney General tends to put charges for other criminal offences such as abuse of police powers for which much lower sentences are prescribed.

The practice also shows that police abuse, even when it has serious consequences for the health and life of the victim, is processed through disciplinary measures such as termination of employment contracts, while criminal charges do not correspond to the description of the act, or the penalties do not correspond to the grave nature of the abuse.

The report also covers internal data of the Attorney General on the number of reported, rejected and charged criminal acts in relation to torture.

 

Article 13 of the Convention defines the right to complaint regarding torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The report covers practical and administrative obstacles regarding this provision, especially the fact that the only impartial body to which victims have a right to complain is the Attorney General and that this complaint is limited to a 3 day period from the time when the illegal action ended.

 

Practice regarding other articles such as the right to compensation, the obligation of education and informing, obligation on impartial and fast investigation, are also part of the report.

 

The report refers to the official report of the Republic of Croatia and has been made on the basis of research on court practice, domestic laws and bylaws covering this subject,  the Ombudsman’s reports for the reporting period, the Attorney General’s yearly reports, Croatian Helsinki Committee cases and complaints, official reports of the international organisations such as Amnesty International, US State Department Human rights reports, and other sources such as media and Croatian  NGOs’ practice.

 

 

 

      

I. OVERALL SITUATION REGARDING TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT

 

The following description of the situation regarding torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in Croatia is a compilation of official reports of Amnesty international, the U.S. State Department, the Croatian Ombudsman and domestic NGOs.

 

During 1997 there were some occasional credible reports that police beat persons, for example, in the case of ethnic Serb and mixed-marriage returnees detained after incidents in Hrvatska Kostajnica. In May of that year, after a group of 10 displaced people returned to their homes near Hrvatska Kostajnica, a crowd of about 150 Bosnian Croat refugees armed with sticks and poles, went on the rampage. They systematically identified houses owned by people who had remained in the area during its occupation by Serb forces, primarily Croatian Serbs, then ransacked them and assaulted the occupants. Dozens of people were beaten during the initial mob attacks and in isolated assaults over following days. Mirko Knezeviç, who was 60 years old, died in hospital apparently as a result of beatings. National and local officials tried to justify the actions of the rioters, and 10 people were charged only with “participating in a gathering which committed a criminal act”, despite the availability of witnesses to specific assaults. Croatian Serbs, human rights defenders and critics of the government were the most common targets of a range of human rights violations committed throughout the country. Journalists and open critics of the government faced criminal charges, sometimes solely for expressing their opinions.   

There were reports of ill-treatment by police. The victims included human rights defenders, journalists and members of minorities. Vjekoslav Magaß, a representative in Eastern Slavonia of the Hrvatski Helsinki Odbor (the Croatian Helsinki Committee), was assaulted by an off-duty police officer in April. The officer reportedly hit and punched Vjekoslav Magaß and threw stones at him as he tried to get away.

 

The authorities continued to fail to protect Croatian Serbs who had remained in the Krajina following offensives in 1995 by Croatian armed forces.

They continued to be attacked by civilians, sometimes accompanied by police and soldiers. Croatian Serb refugees and displaced people who tried to visit or return to their homes in the Krajina were also attacked.

Regarding the official reports of the Ombudsman’s office (Official report for 1997, section: Personal security) there were 30 complaints on threats to personal security; mostly in the post conflict areas. Six of those complaints were addressing police brutality, but after the ombudsman’s office’s enquiries they turned out to be false. 

It is very important to mention that the Ombudsman’s reports until the year 2000 do not give a sense of credibility and impartiality. Those reports in some cases differ from other independent sources. But, the report for 1999, published in 2000, was more systematic and thorough.

 

In 1998, there were again reports regarding police brutality especially in post conflict communities, or towards the Serbs. For example, a Serb convicted of war crimes in April alleged that he was beaten and tortured while in custody in 1997. Despite the repeated urgings of the defense counsel and international human rights organizations, no investigation of those allegations had taken place at year's end.

There was little progress in criminal investigations and prosecutions in cases of human rights violations, including hundreds of ethnically motivated killings, committed during the 1995 security forces' offensives Operations Flash and Storm. The Justice Ministry stated that the statistics it had provided about these killings were meaningless, and it continued to refuse to provide information about individual cases, including some which had been well documented and publicized.

Ill-treatment by the police continued to be reported. The authorities acted quickly in the case of Riccardo Cetina, an Italian tourist who died from injuries inflicted by police after an alleged traffic offence. The authorities stated that this was the first case of its kind, despite several earlier reports of ill-treatment in police custody. No date was set for the retrial of two secret police officers charged with “extracting a statement” from and “inflicting serious bodily harm” on Íefik Mujkiç, a Croatian resident of Bosniak nationality who died after being tortured in September 1995. In other cases where victims needed hospital treatment as a result of police ill-treatment, it was not known whether action was taken against the perpetrators.

In September members of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment visited Croatia. In November the UN Committee against Torture considered Croatia's second periodic report on its implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Committee raised concern relating to several cases about which it had been briefed by Amnesty International. In particular, it asked the authorities about the status of the case of Íefik Mujkiç, who died following torture by the secret police in 1995. Two police officers were found guilty of extracting a statement from him and causing serious bodily harm in May 1996, but both were released pending a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court (see below). The Committee also requested Croatia to respond in full to allegations made by Amnesty International and other organizations that human rights violations, including torture, committed by Croatian security forces in 1995 had not been adequately investigated and that in most cases no one had been brought to account for them.

 

In 1999, again most of the attacks and police brutality happened in post-conflict areas.  According to press reports in August, ethnic Croatian police officers in the Baranja region beat persons of Roma nationality. According to a Roma rights NGO, in one incident an ethnic Croatian police officer allegedly beat a Roma man and threatened him at gunpoint. The Rom a man reportedly filed a complaint against the officer.

In April during tense contract negotiations with Croatian railroads' management, the vice president of the Locomotive Engineers Union reportedly was beaten severely with metal bars by unknown assailants.

According to press reports, in June an opposition Socialist Worker's Party leader reported that an unidentified assailants hit him in the head with a gun, as a result of which he was hospitalized. According to the individual, this was the fourth or fifth such attack he suffered in the previous 12 months.

Ethnic minorities reportedly were beaten by unknown assailants in the Danubian region According to press reports, unknown persons threw bombs at Romani houses in Vardarci. Roma allegedly reported the incidents to police, but no suspects were found.

There was an increasing number of reports of police ill-treating people in custody or using excessive force in carrying out their duties. In the few instances in which the authorities responded to such allegations, investigations and prosecutions were not pursued promptly and impartially.

 

In October special police officers in Dubrovnik were reported to have severely ill-treated Nikola Miletic, a bar owner, after he failed to close his bar on time. When one police officer twisted his arm behind his back and he tried to free himself, another officer beat him. Nikola Miletic also claimed that after he was handcuffed, an officer touched the handcuffs with an electro-shock baton. He was detained overnight in the police station. Several hours after his release he lost consciousness and had to undergo hospital treatment. According to his medical records, he had sustained bruising to his head, neck and shoulders as well as to his eye.

 

In September the retrial started of two members of the Croatian secret police, the SZUP, charged in connection with the death in custody of Sefik Mujkic, a Croatian citizen of Bosnian origin, in September 1995. A forensic expert who testified at the retrial stated that the victim had been seated while being repeatedly beaten with a blunt object on his upper back, arms, legs and soles of his feet. The expert concluded that Sefik Mujkic's death was caused by a combination of the injuries he sustained, psychological stress and an existing heart condition (of which the police officers were allegedly aware). An AI delegate who attended the trial considered that the public prosecutor accepted without question the defendants' defence that they were acting in self-defence. In December the two officers were found guilty of extracting a confession by the use of force and of inflicting grievous bodily harm. They were sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment.

During year 2000, the problems with return of refugees continued and with war trials. Lengthy pretrial detention remained a serious problem, particularly for ethnic Serbs accused of war crimes. Suspects generally are held in custody pending trial, and there have been several cases of pretrial detention lasting for several months or years, including individuals awaiting the prosecutor's appeal of their acquittal. For example, in the case of Stefan Curnic, who was convicted for war crimes, international observers noted that he had been incarcerated since December 1998 without trial.

There were periodic reports of ethnic tensions between ethnic Serb and Croat police officers in the Danubian region. For example, one ethnic Croat police officer "dry-fired" his unloaded pistol into the face of an ethnic Serb colleague. The officer received a short suspension from duty, and credible observers expressed concern that mid-level police supervisors failed to take the incident seriously or adequately punish the perpetrator. However, upon being informed of the incident, the assistant Interior Minister ordered a thorough investigation. The commander of the station where the incident took place was replaced by year's end.

II. INFORMATION REGARDING MATERIAL PROVISIONS OF THE CONVENTION

Article 2

As stated in the official report, the Croatian constitution, Penal Law, Criminal procedure act, Law on internal affairs (since 2001: Law on police force) all incorporate provisions in order to prevent and punish criminal acts that could be described as torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Although the mentioned legislation bans torture, in certain aspects those laws are vague and not clear enough.

First of all, the Criminal procedure act and Penal code came into force only in January 1998, and until then the penal code did not punish torture as defined in the Convention.

 

The Law on the Police came into force in January 2001 and it incorporates higher standards regarding torture prevention. The Law on the Police introduced the proportionality principle in use of compulsory means by police officers and bind the use of compulsory means only to those prescribed by law. Until 2001, the Law on Internal affairs was in force under which there was no judicial control over state violations of the right to respect for privacy, especially wire tapping and mail and letter secrecy. The violations of those rights by the police Agency for protection of constitutional order were reported only to the Minister of internal affairs and the Minister reported it to the President of the Republic. A warrant from the judiciary was not needed. Since the change of government in 2000, such practice has been abolished and now the Supreme court judges are the only body that can approve and monitor such actions.

 

The detention rules set in the former Law on internal affairs made it possible to detain a person for up to three days without approval of the investigative judge and initiation of a formal investigation. The detainee has a right to appeal in the first 24 hours of detention, but it can be stated that this right is only a so-called “cosmetic rule” because the appeal of the detainee does not delay the realization of detention and the Minister has a up to 48 hours for response to the appeal which in practice meant that even unlawful detention lasted for a maximum period of three days.

 

The use of compulsory means by police officers in the above mentioned law is defined extremely vaguely in the sense that it does not define all possible compulsory means, but uses terms “…and other compulsory means defined in bylaws.”

 

Regarding the fact that the bylaws that referred to the police in that period were usually internal police rules that were not published in the official legal gazette, there was a broad space for use of compulsory means against which citizens could not appeal.

 

Under the new Law on the Police, the Minister of the Interior (after 2000) defined a very broad list of criminal act for which the use of fire arms by the police is allowed:

 

I. A Police officer is allowed to use fire arms when there is no other possibility to prevent the realization of a criminal act for which is possible to declare punishment from 5 years imprisonment or more:

 

Criminal act against life and physical integrity:

Murder (all degrees)

Manslaughter

Euthanasia

Grievous bodily harm

 

Criminal acts against freedom and human and citizens rights:

Unlawful deprivation of freedom

Kidnapping

Extortion

 

Criminal acts against the Republic of Croatia:

Treason

Assassination

Kidnapping of senior government officials

Violence towards senior government officials

Terrorism

Armed rebellion

Diversion

 

All criminal acts against values protected by international law

Criminal acts against sexual freedom and sexual morals (rape, paedophilia, etc)

Criminal acts against propriety (robbery, extortion, etc)

Criminal acts against public security of people, propriety and traffic (Endangering life and property by dangerous acts or means)

Criminal acts against public order (Assault on an official person, Prevention of performing official duty)

Criminal acts against the armed forces (Disobeying superior)

 

The list of criminal acts when a police officer is allowed to use fire arms is much broader when it comes to preventing the escape of a person caught in the realisation of a criminal act if for such a criminal act is possible to receive a punishment of 10 years imprisonment or more.

 

Article 3

Although Croatia is a member of the Council of Europe, and therefore a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and fundamental freedoms, until now there is now Law on asylum seekers. The stay of aliens is defined by the Law on movement and stay of aliens and it does not foresee the possibility of granting asylum. Nevertheless, Croatia is a signatory to all related international agreements and as a result should interpret domestic laws in line with international standards. However, until now no application for asylum was positively solved. As stated in the official report, the number of applications from 1997-2000 was 70, and none was solved positively. The number of applications is increasing every year due to the security situation in Kosovo (from 1997 to 1999), in Afghanistan (2001) and inIraq and Iran during the late 1990s and beginning of this century. Although it is common knowledge that the human rights situation in the above mentioned countries was very serious, and that there were substantial grounds for believing that a person could be subjected to torture in their home country, there were no positive permits for asylum granted. Some of the immigrants were (and still are) detained in the alien Reception Centres where even the people with substantial grounds for refugee status are not given appropriate rights but are being detained (with freedom of movement restricted to the area of the Centre) for longer periods. In the last few years some progress was made by the UNHCR office that provided some of the asylum seekers with accommodation in a more appropriate centre in Šašina Greda, where freedom of movement is less restricted; although the practical possibility of movement is not realistic due to lack of any documents and stay permits for asylum seekers.

The nongovernmental organization ‘Fade In’ which undertakes investigative journalism and makes alternative documentaries on human rights issues, produced a documentary on the Alien reception centre near Zagreb and talked to Iraqi refugees who were fleeing from the Saddam regime and who stated that even though they could have been killed in Iraq it would be better because here they do not even know why they are imprisoned. The police officers in the Centre stated that they are free to move around the building although the camera captured that they are being locked up in their rooms. There is no difference between illegal immigrants who have no substantial ground for asylum and those who have. The conditions are the same for all of them. It has also been obvious that minimal administrative conditions for the application for refugee status have not been secured because there is no formal request and legal aid provided, and none whatsoever in the mother tongue of the potential asylum seekers.

Regarding the answers given to the European Commission in the “Questionnaire for Croatia” Croatia does not recognize non-state agents of prosecution and these are not included in the definition of a refugee.

Regarding these facts and the number of forced removals of foreign citizens noted in the official report, it is obvious that the non-refoulment principle is not being implemented in practice, although there is a legal basis for it.

 

Article 4

The Penal Law (Criminal code), as mentioned in the report bans torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in several articles:  torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (art. 176), unlawful deprivation of liberty (art. 124), violation of citizens’ equality (art. 106), extortion of accusations (art. 126), maltreatment in performing service or public mandates (art. 127), coercion (art. 128), violation of the inviolability of home (art. 122), illegal search (art. 123), violation of secrecy of correspondence (art. 130), and unauthorized recording and wiretapping (art. 131).

The sentences prescribed by the Penal law are defined as minimum and maximum sentences for certain criminal act:

For torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment the prescribed minimum is one year’s imprisonment and the maximum is 8 years.

For Unlawful deprivation of liberty done by official persons, the minimum is 3 months and the maximum five years.

For Extortion of accusations minimum is 3 months and maximum five years, and in the case of serious violence taking place during the investigation process or especially serious consequences of such investigation, the maximum is 10 years.

Maltreatment in performing service or public mandates, the minimum is three months and maximum three years, but if done towards a child or minor then up to five years.

Other offences do not refer to the criminal acts done by an official person and regarding their content they do not refer to the definition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the way the mentioned acts do.

It is very significant that regarding the description of the mentioned criminal acts they refer to different stages of torture or it overlaps with the definition of torture in article 176.

The practice shows that the Attorney General’s Offices tend to define acts done by police officers or other public officials rather as maltreatment in performing service than as torture.  This practice is probably linked to the fact that lower sentences are guaranteed for Maltreatment compared with torture.

The following is an example of such court practice published on the Supreme Court web site as a “sentence”; this means it is a competent opinion in the interpretation of law and facts and it interprets the meaning of “serious violence”:

The acts of the accused who were acting as police officers during the “informative interview”(informal investigative procedure, which depends on the willingness/consent of the citizen) with the victim, in order to extort the confession that he unintentionally committed arson, have been beating him with fists on the head and body, and as well as physical injuries – burns below his eyes and ears, also caused brain trauma which is a serious physical injury, cannot be characterized as an extortion of an allegation followed by serious violence; and defined as aggravated extortion, but is the ideal juncture of unqualified extortion and serious physical injury .

 

By this definition, the court held not only that this description does not  qualify as torture, but that it even does not meet the criteria for the qualified version of the extortion of an allegation for which the maximum sentence is up to ten years imprisonment, but rather unqualified «regular» extortion for which the maximum is up to three years.

Regarding the provision of the convention on criminalizing attempted torture, the Penal Law has a general provision that attempts of all criminal acts for which the sentence is above five years are punishable, and also for some other criminal acts under the special provision.

The official report also shows that there is no reported criminal acts on torture (article 176), but having in mind that the Attorney General’s offices have an obligation to define under which criminal act reported facts/situations fall, it is probable that there is insufficient knowledge or institutional practice on this matter, because regarding the court practice and media reports there should have been accusations for torture.

The cases reported below were to the Helsinki Committee, and they tend to prove this statement. For the majority of these cases, the final result of the proceedings is not known due to the fact that after initial help from the Helsinki Committee the cases have not been monitored if legal aid was obtained by the lawyer.

Josip Ćale, a refugee from Vojvodina (Yugoslavia) is homeless so he sometimes sleeps in the main Railroad station in Zagreb. On May 7 1998, at 4 a.m. while sleeping in one of the wagons he was beaten up by three police officers. The beatings started without previous identification procedure or any explanation .This situation occurred again two weeks later and Josip reported this to the Helsinki Committee. After reporting this to the Police Centre he  was given the answer that such behavior was not registered in the district and that the Clinical hospital in the Centre also does not have records on him and on the basis of that the police conclude that the alleged beatings are not true.

On the basis of the statistical information regarding the number of reported and rejected cases related to torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and the number of  charges brought, given by the Attorney General’s office, we have to note that our data and data from the official report do not match. Official reports for the number of reported criminal acts and charges are the obligation of the Attorney General’s office from which we received the data. The difference in data needs to be investigated. 

 

Article 106. Violation of citizen’s equality

   

Article 124. Unlawful deprivation of freedom

Article 127. Maltreatment in performing services of public mandate

 

 Article 128. Coercion

 

Article 176. Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Year

 

The deputy of the Attorney General that sent us this official data has put on the document the following remarks: the criminal act of extortion of allegation is not part of the official statistics because of the small number of reported acts. Again, we note that the official report of the Republic of Croatia has statistical information for this criminal act.

 

Also, it is obvious that this statistical information does not exist for 1997, since it was not sent to us as requested, and the official report also does not cover it.

 

 

Article 10

 

The problems during the 1990s regarding the education of police officers concerned the fact that many members of the police force active during the war wanted to keep their positions in the police, although many were without any proper training. Many of those police officers joined police forces during the war, sometimes only with elementary school education. The political decision, combined with social issues in the post war state, was to keep those people in the police force even in a time of peace. Many illegal acts from the side of the police was a consequence of such a political decision.

 

Unofficial information suggests that the chief of one large police precinct found out that more than 50 % of the staff does not have a driving license, although they drive official police cars. 

After 2000, the situation regarding police education improved significantly. In 2003 the Ministry of the Interior implemented a project for Community police officers which included lectures given by NGO staff on Human rights and personal security.

 

Article 12 and Article 13

The implementation of the right to prompt and impartial investigation in our opinion is not satisfactory. In the cases of maltreatment by the police, one has a possibility of reporting to the Minister of internal affairs, or if imprisoned to the prison Governor. We believe that the practice showed that these mechanisms cannot be regarded as impartial because the criminal act and person who committed the act are members of the same institution as the appeal instance. For securing the impartiality it is very important to strengthen the role of the Attorney General and the efficiency of that institution. The time in which person has a right to complain to the Attorney General for irregular police conduct during investigation is too short; only three days after the irregularities ended. The practice shows that very often this legal remedy is not efficient, firstly because the victim does not know about it, and secondly because in the period of three days it is difficult to access an Attorney due to being held in custody or suffering from physical injuries. Nevertheless, the number of complaints presented in the official report does not represent sufficient information on this legal remedy because there is no information on the proceedings that followed the complaints.

For additional information, the author of this report frequently requested the Attorney General’s office to provide insight into the Yearly reports of the Attorney General’s office. The same requests were sent to the Ministry of Justice but both institutions failed in providing information. The statistical information on the number of complaints and their results should be publicly accessible which is not the case regarding the mentioned report. Even the Croatian information and documentation agency was not provided with the Attorney General’s reports for the period until 2001.

Regarding protection of witness it is important to mention that during that period there was not any specific witness protection program, except provisions of the Criminal procedure act defining measures during the investigation and trial such as separate hearings, but not defining measures for protection outside the procedures; the Criminal procedure act sets the legal obligation for defining protection measures in separate law. Until 2002, and criminal proceedings for organized crime, that program was not finished.

Article 14

Under domestic law provisions in Criminal Procedure Act, there is a right to compensation for any person whose sentence was wrongly pronounced, and any person wrongly found guilty has the right to claim compensation on the grounds of special legal remedy, pursuant to article 476 of the Criminal Procedure Act. Also persons who have been detained without criminal proceedings having been instituted, persons who have been acquitted by a decision of a court of law, persons who have wrongly served time in prison, persons whose penalty of deprivation of liberty has been diminished, persons who have been deprived of liberty on the grounds of a mistake made by a State body, or persons who have been detained in prison for too long, have this right

There is no specific legal provision that would set clear grounds for compensation for acts of torture. The closest provision is for persons who have been deprived of liberty on the grounds of a mistake made by a State body and persons who have been detained without criminal proceedings having been instituted. So it is not clear should the victims of torture seek their compensation through the mentioned procedure, through the regular procedure for compensation in the litigation process, or through the Constitutional court.

Article 15

Illegally obtained evidence is defined under the Criminal Procedure Act, such evidences cannot be the ground for a court decision/judgment, in case that decision is based on illegally obtained evidence such a situation constitutes a ground for appeal as a “serious violation of criminal procedure”, on which court of appeal has to pay attention ex officio.

 

III. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

 

 

While writing the report one of the most important conclusions reached was that there is still insufficient data regarding torture and related criminal acts, especially that which is publicly accessible without long and formal administrative procedures.

 

Croatia is in the process of implementing e-government principles and is now starting to do the same with the judiciary. The Supreme Court is updating its practice on their official web site, and recently the Constitutional court is doing the same.

 

Very important bylaws regarding police conduct are not published in the Official gazette, but are still defined as internal rules of procedure. Although there were problems in accessing some documentation, on the very last day of writing the report, the Attorney General’s Office sent the requested data, and the chief of the internal control unit of the Ministry of the Interior phoned us and acted very cooperatively. The data that we have requested from that unit will be provided later and incorporated into the publication.

 

The overall situation regarding police and prisons is better than during the 1990s, as well as other institutions. Still, there is some incompetence regarding the structuring and documenting of police and court practice data.   

 

NGOs in Croatia, except for Amnesty International, are not dealing with torture in a manner that would be needed for efficient and thorough monitoring and reporting of state institutions. There is a great need for a network of NGOs or individuals dealing with this question as well as for an independent intersectoral body, and for capacity building for proper monitoring and reporting. 

 

The additional education of the judiciary and police staff regarding implementation of this Convention is needed, especially because of the before mentioned phenomenon that no criminal charge on torture was ever made.

 

An important issue is also the education of medical staff and the creation of interdisciplinary teams that would deal with cases of torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

   

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