Council of Europe denounces Kosovo police brutality
Agence France Presse (English) - January 19, 2009 Monday 11:53 PM GMT

STRASBOURG, Jan 20 2009 - Police in Kosovo have severely beaten suspects and have gone as far as using a mock execution to extract confessions, a Council of Europe report said Tuesday, denouncing the treatment as torture.

The allegations were documented by members of the human rights body's anti-torture committee (CPT) who visited police stations, prisons and psychiatric hospitals in Kosovo in March 2007.

"The allegations concerned, in the main, punches, slaps and kicks by KPS (Kosovo police) officers attempting to obtain confessions from criminal suspects being interviewed," the report said.

"In a few cases, the severity of the ill-treatment alleged was such that it could easily be described as torture (such as a mock execution or prolonged and severe beatings)," it said.

"Further, a number of detained persons alleged that KPS officers had exerted psychological pressure on them not to lodge a complaint regarding the ill-treatment sustained."

The alleged abuses were never committed in front of observers from UN civilian police, the report said.

"It is a matter of concern that several detained persons met by the delegation indicated that they had sustained visible injuries from police ill-treatment and that they had mentioned to the judge the cause for these injuries," the report said.

"However, no action whatsoever had allegedly been taken by the judge in these cases."

The CPT can visit any detention facility in the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe in order to prevent torture and inhumane treatement of detainees.

A number of detainees claimed they were unable to contact a lawyer between their arrest and the start of their police interrogation, the report added.

"The delegation also observed that, on several occasions, detained suspects had been transferred to interview rooms located outside police detention facilities and, sometimes, they were even taken to such rooms immediately after their apprehension, prior to being transferred to a custody facility."

The European Union launched a law and order mission in December that took over from the post-war UN interim mission in Kosovo, UNMIK.

The task of the mission, known as EULEX, is to supervise ethnic-Albanian majority Kosovo's transition after it declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, superseding the almost decade-old UNMIK.

Kosovo's declaration of independence has been fiercely opposed by Serbia and its ally Russia.

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