NAMs adopt Human Rights, Constitutional Matters Committee Report

Suwaibou Touray, the vice chairman to the committee and member for Wuli East, said that the committee had extensive consultation with relevant stakeholders and also made reference to the criminal code as well as International Law instruments such as the United Nations Convention on Torture and other, or cruel, inhuman degrading treatment or punishment (1987) as well as the declaration on the protection of all persons from being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (1975).

He said in this Act, torture means any act or omission, by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental, is internationally inflicted on a person by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of any person, whether acting in an official or private capacity, for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession from the person or any other person; punishing that person for an act he/she or any other person has committed or is suspected of having committed or of planning to commit or intimidating or coercing the person or any other person to do, or to refrain  from doing any act.

According to him, the committee has recommended that the word “of” be deleted in subsection 1(b) to be read as “punishing that person for an act he or she or any other person has committed, or is suspected of having committed or planning to commit.