f metal in a waste basket in Istambul, Turkey. After accusing them of robbing a tape recorder, agents took them to the police station, where they kept them locked without communication during thirty two hours. According to the children, they undressed them, leaving them in their underclothes, and they locked them up them in a toilet, where the police officers urinated on them and forced them to lie down on human excrement (Amnesty International, 2000). Institutionalized children and young people are victims of police force abuse, illegal halting at police stations, violations and tortures within the institutions allegedly called protective. The power and the authority are enforced in these institutions in a violent and arbitrary form, using physical punishment, denying food and through the conditions of inhabitable old, anti-functional establishments without water or electricity (ONG, 1995). Minors under police custody are particularly exposed to rape violation and sexual abuse from the police as well as from other prisoners. Police officers are responsible for most documented cases of torture; the most common and rapidly increasing form of torture against children is probably the beating of criminal suspects and in police custody. Beatings can be severe, and even deadly. Children have been struck with fists, sticks, chair legs, gun-butts, whips, iron pipes and electrical cords. They have suffered bruises, concussion, internal bleeding, broken bones, lost teeth and ruptured organs. Children detained by the police have also been sexually assaulted; burned with cigarettes or electricity; exposed to extremes of heat and cold; deprived of food, drink or sleep; or made to stand, sit or hang for long hours in awkward positions. Yet accusations of torture or ill-treatment against law enforcement...
