E/CN.4/1997/7/Add.3 page 15 48. If these three conditions are found to apply, the prosecutor must lodge the appropriate complaint before the competent criminal court, for the latter to initiate the pre-trial investigation. According to the report by the Attorney-General of the Republic, there were 50 requests for información de nudo hecho investigations for alleged torture throughout the country in 1995. 13 The report, however, does not contain information on their outcome. 49. The 1994 report of the Attorney-General's Office stated that the Office was working to streamline its processing of cases in order to decrease as far as possible the frequent lengthy delays, which in many cases result in impunity for those officials who really have committed a publicly actionable offence in the performance of their duties. The report also states that the Public Prosecutor's Office informed the Ministers of the Interior and Justice, as well as the State Governors, of its concern at the continual delays of the 14 police forces in supplying information requested by the courts. 50. The representatives of the Attorney-General's Office who met with the Special Rapporteur said that they had issued instructions for streamlining the nudo hecho procedure to ensure that it would not remain with the court for longer than 10 working days, according to an internal circular issued by the Office. After expiry of that time period, the prosecutor was to withdraw the request and decide whether or not to institute formal proceedings. The Attorney General's Office in Caracas usually receives a copy of the nudo hecho applications filed anywhere in the country, which enables it to monitor the prosecutors' work. In addition, prosecutors in areas far from the capital who lack the means to institute proceedings can always turn to the Attorney-General's Office to ask for support on the basis of the principle of unity in force throughout the Office. They admitted that it was difficult to obtain the information required for the nudo hecho procedure from the police. If repeated complaints were received in respect of a specific place of detention, the Attorney-General could order a special surprise operation; six such operations had been conducted in Caracas in recent months, revealing that detainees were in fact being harassed, as a result of which the appropriate judicial proceedings had been initiated. 51. Non-governmental sources criticized the functioning and very existence of the nudo hecho procedure and said that, if it were eliminated, the time it currently took could be used instead for the actual proceedings. They also said that a nudo hecho procedure took on average 14 months to be completed. The Minister of Justice agreed regarding its limited usefulness. The Special Rapporteur, for his part, did not receive sufficient information to determine whether the 10-day time-limit for processing this procedure was in general being respected. 52. A further point is that the PTJ is in charge of carrying out all criminal investigations into complaints of torture and other human rights violations committed by other police forces as well as by its own personnel. In the opinion of some of the people with whom the Special Rapporteur spoke, this limits the impartiality and effectiveness of such investigations and helps to create an atmosphere of impunity for the perpetrators. The Director