E/CN.4/2003/68/Add.2 page 11 General Procurator informed the Special Rapporteur that his Office not only was undertaking preventive visits to places of detention, but was also working closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights organizations, including international ones. He said that organizations were visiting places of detention and thus monitoring the treatment of persons deprived of liberty and their conditions of detention, but he failed to name them. He expressed the hope that this work would lead to positive results in due course. 2. The Ombudsman’s Office 31. Pursuant to the 1997 “Law on the Republic of Uzbekistan on the Authorized Person of the Oliy Majlis (Parliament) for Human Rights Ombudsman”, the Ombudsman3 is charged with the monitoring of human rights law. Her work encompasses four areas of activity: the improvement of legislation in the field of human rights; the investigation of human rights complaints and restitution; the provision of (public) information relating to human rights; and cooperation at the international level. She indicated to the Special Rapporteur that she was paying particular attention to vulnerable persons, including detainees, and had carried out visits to detention centres on the basis of complaints received. In 2002, visits had been carried out to a women’s and a children’s colony. 32. During the meeting with the Ombudsman, the overall responsibility of the General Procurator’s Office regarding the investigation of alleged illegal actions by law enforcement officials was reiterated. In 2001, an agreement on the collaboration between the Ombudsman’s and the General Procurator’s Offices was reached with a view to enhancing their cooperation in dealing with complaints and restoring citizens’ rights. According to the 2001 Ombudsman’s report, 54 per cent of the total number of complaints, i.e. 4,472, were connected with the functioning of the court and law enforcement bodies. They included cases concerning unjustified prolonged investigation of cases, procrastination, unlawful actions by law enforcement officials, contradictory court verdicts or failure to execute them, illegal methods of investigation, violations of the right to counsel for persons under investigation.4 For the first 11 months of 2002, the Ombudsman had received only six complaints regarding unlawful acts of law enforcement agencies. She stated that as a result of the review of these complaints, criminal cases had been suspended, public officials had been dismissed and investigations had taken place. 33. The Ombudsman stressed that her work needed to be more effective, and she expressed the hope that a new draft law under consideration would give her the right to protest unlawful actions of law enforcement officials and to draw conclusions in cases she would submit to the relevant public authorities, including the General Procurator’s Office. She regretted her Office’s lack of financial and personnel resources and noted that other State authorities did not always cooperate fully and did not share all relevant information. II. THE PRACTICE OF TORTURE: SCOPE AND CONTEXT A. General issues 34. In recent years, the Special Rapporteur had received information according to which torture is widespread and targets persons suspected of having committed ordinary crimes as well