(h) The creation of a new Office of Minority Ombudsman in 2001 to replace the Ombudsman for Aliens, with wider powers under the Minority Ombudsman Act and Aliens Act, including the ability to act for asylum-seekers and deportees; (i) The fact that there has been no reported case of torture in Finland during the reporting period; (j) The publication of the reports of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on its visit to Finland (CPT/Inf (2003) 38 and CPT/Inf (2004) 20), and the Government replies thereto, as well as the work being carried out by the State party to implement the recommendations made by the European Committee; (k) The signature of the Optional Protocol to the Convention in September 2003 and the measures being undertaken to seek its ratification; (l) The ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 29 December 2000. C. Subjects of concern 72. The Committee expresses concern that: (a) The Committee’s previous recommendations notwithstanding no specific definition of torture exists in criminal law covering all the constituent elements of article 1 of the Convention, although torture is prohibited by the new Constitution. (b) The “accelerated procedure” under the Aliens Act allows an extremely limited time for applicants for asylum to have their cases considered thoroughly and to exhaust all lines of appeal if their application is rejected; (c) Despite the safeguards in place, the Parliamentary Ombudsman reported on one recent case of an asylum-seeker whose application had been rejected and who was subsequently allegedly subjected to torture in his country of origin; (d) Despite the programme of prison renovation currently under way, the practice of “slopping out”, which continues in some prisons, will not be definitively halted until 2010. D. Recommendations 73. The Committee recommends that the State party: (a) Enact specific legislation criminalizing torture in all its forms, as defined in article 1 of the Convention; (b) Review the application of the “accelerated procedure” for consideration of asylum requests to ensure that applicants have sufficient time to use all available appeal procedures before irreversible action is taken by the authorities; 33