Impunity: another base of torture

We are talking about a Parliament that hides special anti-terrorist legislation (those sadly famous anti-terrorist laws) in a supposedly ordinary judicial process. The parliament gives a free hand to police bodies to arrest and apply anti-terrorist legislation without any former requisites and also gives full authority to the judges of the High Court to rule on the matter. They allow for detention incommunicado (with no contact with anybody outside the police station, not even with a lawyer) and extend the period to five days when the police bodies request it. For this the police don't have to give an explanation or reasoning for their request.

IDuring this period of incommunication and the extension of the period of detention, nobody other than those in the station (the detainee, police and clerks from the High Court) knows what is happening to the detainee there. Thus we are dealing with secret police spaces in which the practice of torture on detention is habitual.

Torture is carried out in such a way as not to leave marks. The "bag", bath, and open handed blows, threats, sexual abuse, humiliation, mock executions...have been used habitually during the year 2000. "I'm going to destroy you and later you will make a complaint and nothing will happen to me", a police agent said to a detainee last year. It is clear that nothing will happen to him, even with a bit of look he will be promoted for his merits.

The Judges of the High Court don't want to see this reality. They turn a blind eye when a detainee appears in the High Court with marks of torture or is in poor psychological health. When taking the judicial statement of the detainee they base it on the results of the police interrogation. Definitively, torture is useful for them too.

In these cases, the condemned agents are not discharged from their posts. They continue in them and are often rewarded with promotions. Once sentenced the Government rescues them and pardons them. This is what happened with the last pardoning.

Many international bodies have established the framework of holding detainees incommunicado as a framework that facilitates the use of torture. They have urged the Spanish Government to take measures to overcome this practise, but to date these measures haven't been adopted and in addition they continue to "pardon" the crime of torture. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the United Nations Committee against Torture, the United Nations Special Secretary on Torture and Amnesty International are some of the NGO's and institutions that have made such appeals to successive Spanish Governments.

The U.N special Reporter Peter Kooijmans, in his annual report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 1992, stated that the impunity with which police bodies act, and the lack of thorough investigation of complaints of torture, as well as the long processes that those who make complaints face, are pillars of the practise of torture. Hardly referring to the Spanish State? In the same way the United Nations Committee against Torture have shown their concern with torture in the Spanish State on various occasions.

We will now detail the pardonings given by the Government to various torturers, showing the cases of torture for which they were condemned and then pardoned.