The Protector of Citizens Zoran Pašalić and members of the NPM team met yesterday with the president of the Commission for the Implementation of Standards for Police Conduct in the Field of Torture Prevention, Milivoj Nedimović, and his associates. The meeting was held in order to establish regular and continuous cooperation between the NPM and the MIA Commission in the field of torture prevention and with the aim of mutual identification of problems that the NPM and the Commission perceive in the course of their visits to the Police Directorates and police stations regarding the position of persons in police detention and the conditions in which they reside.
The task of the Commission, which was established within the Ministry of the Interior by the Minister in 2014, is to work on the execution and implementation of the recommendations of international treaty bodies in the ministry's practice and to contribute to the improvement of position of persons deprived of their liberty. To this end, members of the Commission visit police departments and stations within their constituency, have unrestricted access to all premises, and upon completion of the visit, they report to organizational units and issue binding orders to remedy the identified deficiencies. This year, as they pointed out at a meeting with the Protector of Citizens, they visited 13 Police Directorates and 25 police stations within them, and in their practice so far, they recorded the handling of all orders that have been sent through the reports.
The NPM representatives briefed members of the MIA Commission about their this year's results achieved in 13 visits to Police Directorates and police stations. The NPM visits, one of which was nightly, are realized without prior notice, a practice established by the NPM this year. Also, in a number of cases, except for visiting the police stations, the NPM team members also visited detention units within institutions for the enforcement of criminal sanctions.
Establishing cooperation with the MIA Commission is important for the NPM, as, among other things, they agreed to hold regular quarterly meetings, which will at the same time be an opportunity to consider implementing the recommendations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), since this is an obligation of the Republic of Serbia stipulated by the action plans for Chapters 23 and 24.