As a liberal democracy, Australia needs its own report on US torture in Iraq and has a legal and moral obligation to prevent torture.

"OPCAT is an unusual treaty in that it creates no new substantive rights. Yet it could be the single most positive development this decade in improving conditions in all Australian places of detention."

Amnesty International has examined the Egyptian authorities’ use of solitary confinement as a tool to inflict additional punishment against prisoners with a political profile. It has found that solitary confinement for such prisoners invariably amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and sometimes to torture.

This Consultation Paper (the Paper) aims to help those with an interest in conditions of places of detention to participate in the process that will determine how OPCAT is implemented in Australia.

At Saydnaya Military Prison, the Syrian authorities have quietly and methodically organized the killing of thousands of people in their custody. Amnesty International’s research shows that the murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination, carried out at Saydnaya since 2011, has been perpetrated as part of an attack against the civilian population that has been widespread...