E/CN.4/1999/61/Add.1 page 29 mission that it has agreed to the publication in January 1999 of the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. In other words, he does not view the practices as systematic in the first of the three senses described above. They may well, nevertheless, deserve that categorization in its second sense in numerous places around the country, especially if the less extreme, but still serious forms of torture or ill-treatment referred to in the previous paragraph are taken into consideration. As far as the third use of “systematic” is concerned, the Special Rapporteur considers this use too conducive to misunderstanding to apply it, since any incident involving sustained infliction of ill-treatment could fall within its scope. On the other hand, the geographic spread of the allegations, the range of potential victims, as well as the number of testimonies received before and during the mission, compel a finding that the practices referred to in the previous paragraph, in whatever specific combination, remain widespread. Where, as is the case with suspects held in connection with ordinary criminality involving not more than two persons, there is immediate access to legal advice and the 24-hour period of detention before judicial intervention applies, the extent and seriousness of allegations decreases substantially. The practice involved here could not be characterized as systematic, nor does the information available suggest that it is anything like as widespread as is the case where the longer custody periods apply. But it should be recalled that the range of crimes susceptible to the longer periods of incommunicado detention is sufficiently elastic to permit law enforcement agencies and complaisant prosecutors to avail themselves of such periods in most of the cases they would consider high priority. 108. It is clear to the Special Rapporteur that there is an unavoidable link between the periods of incommunicado detention and the existence and credibility of serious allegations of torture and ill-treatment. There has certainly been a marked decrease in such periods over the years with the longest ones (in the emergency zones) decreasing from 30 to 15 to the present 10 days. Indeed, access to a judge has now to be after four days, although there remains substantial evidence of judicial willingness to grant a three-day extension without requiring the presence of the detainee. As was admitted by several senior prosecutors, many, if not most, of them approve extensions of from 48 hours to four days without intervening to assess the well-being of the detainees or to subject police requests for such extensions to substantive scrutiny. 109. It was also put to the Special Rapporteur from among his prosecutorial interlocutors that the police find the new detention periods too short (a complaint understandably not voiced to him by his police interlocutors) this by way of defence of the present periods, which were generally portrayed as aiming to conform to international and European standards. The Special Rapporteur appreciates that further reduction in the length of periods of police custody would, therefore, likely encounter substantial resistance from law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, he is convinced that such reductions are necessary to bring Turkish practice up to international standards (as reflected in the case law of the Human Rights Committee with respect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers) and European standards (as reflected in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights). In fact, such reductions would make false accusations of torture and ill-treatment - a phenomenon which