Ill-treatment in detention HRDs are one of the groups at greatest risk of torture and ill-treatment. Their efforts to document and denounce human rights violations, as well as their ability to mobilise communities, frequently arouse the wrath of the authorities, who retaliate by inflicting both physical and mental suffering on them. According to data collected by OMCT’s Global Torture Index, torture and ill-treatment of HRDs is ‘very frequent’ in countries like Belarus and ‘frequent’ in Tunisia and Ethiopia – to mention some countries that were also included in the pilot phase of SOS-Defenders. When defenders are in detention, the risk of torture and ill-treatment is even greater, as they are often subjected to harsh detention regimes and deprived of the due process guarantees commonly offered to ordinary citizens. When dealing with HRDs, repressive governments use not detention as punishment but apply punishment in detention in the form of torture and illtreatment. Among the 93 cases of HRDs arbitrarily detained in 2024 documented by SOS-Defenders, the most reported forms include: • Beatings by prison officers (such as in the cases of Vital Chopik in Belarus and of Bakhrom Khamroev and Fail Alsynov in Russia); •D  eprivation of contact with families (for example, in the cases of Houra Nikbakht, Nasrin Hasani and Samaneh Asghari in Iran); and • Denial of medical care (such as in the case of Mohammad Davari in Iran). ill-treatment These are just a few examples. There is reason to believe that violations against HRDs in detention are significantly underreported, both for fear of suffering further reprisals and because of the inaccessibility of many detention facilities to external monitors and civil society organisations. 10. The Global Torture Index is available at: https://www.omct.org/en/global-torture-index 11