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This is true in the UK. At least, we are trained that we must have a paper trail to show we picked the best candidate, so you have to think carefully about which requirements are essential vs optional. I'm not sure what the law says, but the aim is more to avoid lawsuits than to find out I guess.

Closely tailored requirements to pick the candidate already in mind are definitely a thing that still happens, though. It annoys me as it wastes the time of everyone from the hiring manager through to the unsuccessful candidates, but alas we're all slaves to HR :( Lol at the Swahili thing, I've not seen it so blatant before!

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Thinking about it, this is discrimination law: you have to be able to prove you selected the candidates based on their merits as outlined in the job requirements, rather than a protected characteristic such as race, gender, sexuality etc. Proving a negative is difficult so you need a watertight case for the positive.