In April 2002, Sundara Arachchige Lalith Rajapakse was detained by several police officers and charged with robbery. In detention, the police officers subjected him to various forms of torture to force a confession. As a result of the torture, Rajapakse had to be taken to several hospitals where he remained unconscious for over two weeks. In May 2002, he “was produced before a magistrate, along with a medical report issued by the National Hospital. The medical report, undated, states that the ‘most likely diagnosis alleged to assault due to traumatic encephalitis’.”151 In spite of the evidence, it took another three months before a criminal investigation was commenced. Indictments were served over two years after the torture had taken place and the criminal case was still pending after more than four years when the Human Rights Committee issued its views on the complaint. Rajapakse had also filed a fundamental rights petition in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Hearings in the fundamental rights proceedings were repeatedly adjourned, ostensibly on the grounds that no judgment could be delivered in the case in advance of the verdict of the High Court in the criminal case because any ruling adverse to the defendants in the former would be prejudicial in the latter.152 As a result, the fundamental rights case was kept pending for over four years. The Human Rights Committee found that this delay constituted a violation of Article 2 (3) in connection with Article 7 of the ICCPR. The Rajapakse case is not an isolated occurrence; it reflects a pattern of frequent and substantial delays in fundamental rights proceedings before the Supreme Court in instances where parallel criminal investigations have been pending for years on end. Systemic shortcomings in the investigation of torture cases have thus come to frustrate fundamental rights petitions. The prolonged delays cause insecurity to the torture victims and have a detrimental impact on access to justice when considering the time and effort spent on pursuing such cases and the eventual reparation that can be expected. Given that the Supreme Court has not adjusted its compensation awards to the substantial rate of inflation (persistently over 10% and 13.7% in 2006), a perhaps inadvertent but inevitable result of the delay is that the real value of any award is less than it would have been had the Supreme Court issued its judgment earlier. The linkage between prolonged criminal investigations and the ruling on fundamental rights petitions is for these reasons prone to seriously undermine the effectiveness of constitutional remedies in Sri Lanka. b) Delays in the adjudication of torture cases Claims for reparation in torture cases may be subject to the same delays as ordinary compensation claims in civil cases where the system suffers from systemic shortcomings in the administration of justice. The efficient administration of justice is a constant challenge even in the most sophisticated and resourceful judicial systems; it is therefore unsurprising that many systems fail to deliver timely justice.153 This failure is probably most pronounced in instances where the justice system has collapsed, such as during or following armed conflict.154 In other countries, inordinate delays, such as an average of eleven years in cases going on appeal in the Philippines,155 are often due to a combination of factors. These include inadequate legislation, “the unnecessary complexity of judicial procedures combined 151 Rajapakse v. Sri Lanka, para.2.3. 152 Ibid., para.9.4. 153 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, UN Doc. A/HRC/4/25, 18 January 2007, paras.18 et seq., in particular para.20. 154 Ibid. See for a country example, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, Preliminary Note on the mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, A/HRC/4/25/Add.3, 24 May 2007. 155 Judge Dolores Español, The Philippines: Towards Significant Judicial Reform, in Transparency International, ‘Global Corruption Report 2007: Corruption and Judicial Systems,’ p.260. 33