Mixed government response to torture report

The Zambian government has acknowledged that police tortured suspects arrested in connection with a failed coup in 1997, but has not fully embraced the recommendations of the commission which investigated the claims, Zambian news reports said on Tuesday. The commission of inquiry, headed by Judge Japhet Banda, completed its probe and submitted its report to President Frederick Chiluba last year. On Monday, chief government spokesman Newstead Zimba released the report and the government's response to it in the form of a white paper.

'The Times of Zambia' reported on Tuesday that the government had rejected the commission's recommendations to compensate those who were tortured, saying that the victims could seek redress through the courts. In the white paper, the government said the criteria used for determining deserving beneficiaries and specified awards was inadequate.

The government also rejected a recommendation to retire senior police officers accused of having perpetrated the torture, but accepted several other recommendations outlining torture as a crime and requesting police to strictly comply with the requirement that suspects be detained at gazetted places. In its response, the government noted that the report substantially disregarded the evidence of the security officers as their evidence was dismissed without an in-depth analysis and comparison with implicating evidence. The report had also failed to conclusively deal with the role of army personnel in handling the coup suspects apprehended by them before they were handed over to the police, the government said.