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| NEWS > 13 January 2007 |
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Lebanese police force to abide
Despite a reputation for corruption and political favouritism, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces have opened a human rights unit led by officers who have the power to investigate and prosecute police misconduct.
Although Lebanese and humanitarian groups have long criticised police for such misconduct, including demanding bribes and torturing criminal suspects to extract confessions, both are hailing the move as a small, but positive step.
Lebanon’s deeply fractured political, ethnic and religious communities have long jockeyed for power by loading ministries with loyalists, ... Read more
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Gulf News - Dubai,United Arab
13 January 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
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Rights activists flay handling
New Delhi: They had already been dubbed "diabolical maniacs" by the Indian media and written off as too hot to handle by many lawyers, even before they were charged.
So hardly anyone objected when wealthy businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surender Koli were injected with a controversial "truth serum" last week by police investigating the gruesome murder of at least 17 children and women.
Confessions in police custody are usually inadmissible as evidence in court, let alone those obtained under the influence of narcotics.
Not lawyers from the Bar Association in Noida, a satellite city of the Indian capital New Delhi where the bodies were found, who said that none of their members would represent the pair.
Colin Gonsalves of the Human Rights Law Network says the pair have already been denied a fair trial, and the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty has been trampled on.
In India the use of the anaesthetising drug thiopental sodium has become increasingly common in the last five years. Woozy suspects are supposed to find it harder to lie or deflect questions.
Human rights group Amnesty International said the use of drugs in interrogations was outlawed under international standards and breached medical ethics.
"This constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Amnesty said in a statement.
But the director of the forensic science laboratory in charge of the interrogations says it is better than some alternatives.
"The subject is in a daze and he spills all the facts," Dr J. Vyas told Reuters. "It is any day a better method to extract truth than physical and mental torture."
Six policemen have been sacked and four suspended for ignoring two years of complaints from dozens of poor families that their children were going missing.
By leaking "confessions", Gonsalves says the police are more interested in restoring their tattered reputation and closing the case quickly than in conducting a professional investigation.
"The police are misusing the media to propagate a particular point of view ... to prevent any further investigation into the case and give the impression the case is solved."
"Demonising a suspect in the eyes of the world may lead to a complete denial of justice," said senior criminal lawyer K.T.S. Tulsi. "Unpopular men may fare badly in courts."
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