Amnesty International – Incommunicado Detention

Spain: Amnesty International welcomes Basque parliament proposal to install CCTV in all police stations and end incommunicado detention

Amnesty International welcomes the recent proposal of the Commission of the Interior of the autonomous Basque parliament, aimed at abolishing incommunicado detention and installing CCTV surveillance in all places of detention. On 25 October the Commission of the Interior of the autonomous Basque parliament voted in favour of the proposal, which must now be approved by the Basque parliament in plenary. If adopted, it will be passed on to the Spanish national parliament for consideration and possible action.

For many years Amnesty International and other international organisations have expressed concern about reports of torture and other ill-treatment perpetrated by members of state security forces in Spain. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Spanish government to abrogate Articles 520bis and 527 of the Law of Criminal Procedure governing the incommunicado regime, and to install CCTV surveillance of the custody areas of all police stations in order to protect detainees against the possibility of ill-treatment. This is one of the principal recommendations of a new Amnesty International report on police ill-treatment in Spain, to be published on 14 November.
In light of these concerns, Amnesty International calls on the autonomous Basque parliament and the Spanish national parliament to take swift, positive action on these proposals when they are presented. Under current law, the investigating judge can order incommunicado detention for persons in custody on terrorism-related charges for a total of up to 13 days, first on police or Civil Guard premises and, after five days, in prison.