- - - Capacity: Investigators should receive training on how to take the requisite investigative steps in a skilled and timely manner without resorting to unlawful means, in particular any forms of ill-treatment. To this end, special investigators and/or special investigating units should be assigned and/or set up to investigate torture cases. The responsible investigators and prosecuting bodies should be provided with training on adequate investigation methods in torture cases, such as those contained in the Istanbul Protocol.145 Powers and procedures: Investigating bodies must be vested with the powers to carry out timely and effective investigations, backed up by procedures that ensure accountability and which give the complainant the right to be informed and to seek the timely taking of investigative steps (see above on legislation). Procedures and oversight: Investigating bodies should establish in-built mechanisms to ensure prompt and effective investigations of torture throughout, such as by making the failure to take the requisite measures subject to disciplinary measures. Such internal mechanisms should be complemented by external monitoring bodies, such as oversight bodies tasked with examining whether investigations had been carried out in a timely and effective manner in conformity with national and international standards.146 Role of the judiciary The judiciary plays a crucial role in ensuring prompt investigation and prosecution as well as speedy trials of those responsible for torture. In the investigation phase, courts may, depending on the system, be called upon to receive complaints, order investigative measures, monitor investigations and decide on appeals made in the course of investigations or on the discontinuance of proceedings or the bringing of charges. As stated by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights: “The function of the judicial bodies that intervene in the proceedings does not end with providing a due process that guarantees the defense in the trial, but it must also ensure, in a reasonable period of time, the right of the victim or his next of kin to know the truth of what happened, as well as the punishment of the responsible parties. The right to an effective judicial protection demands that the judges that direct the process avoid unnecessary delays and obstructions, which lead to impunity and frustrate the due judicial protection of human rights [footnotes omitted].”147 Legislation should enable courts to: - - hear timely habeas corpus applications of all detainees and act on any complaints of torture made in such proceedings, in particular by opening an investigation or ordering the responsible authorities to do so; order the requisite investigative measures to be carried out; rule on complaints that certain investigative measures have not been undertaken in a timely manner; rule on the appropriateness of decisions to refuse to open an investigation or to discontinue an investigation; fast-track torture cases where the interests of justice so require. 145 Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 9 August 1999. See also Gutierrez-Soler v Colombia, para.110. 146 REDRESS, Taking Complaints of Torture Seriously, pp.40 et seq. 147 Serrellon-Garzia v Honduras, para.151. 31