CAT/C/75 page 31 Role of Public Prosecutor’s Office officials 145. The use of torture by the judicial police is closely connected with the way in which public prosecutors’ offices are structured and run. Many of the people with whom Committee members spoke said that there was definite complicity between Public Prosecutor’s Office officials and the judicial police and that the officials were not only aware of the practices in question but in some cases even witnessed torture directly or indirectly and knew it had been or was being practised but very rarely took action against those responsible. Some interviewees also noted that, from an administrative point of view, there is no real line of authority between public prosecutors and police chiefs, which makes it difficult for the former to exercise control over the latter. 146. Some of the witnesses interviewed by Committee members stated that a Public Prosecutor’s Office official had been present while they were being tortured; or that the official did not place their poor physical state on record; or that they had not told the official that they had been tortured for fear of further ill-treatment. Some said they had been brought before the Public Prosecutor by the police in order to make a statement; as they refused to confess to the offences with which the police were charging them, however, the prosecutor had returned them to the police, who had continued torturing them and brought them back once they had been forced to sign incriminating statements prepared by the police which they were supposed simply to confirm. Others stated that the police officers who had tortured them were present when they made their statement to the Public Prosecutor. In its recommendation 9/2001, the National Human Rights Commission said that it considered the public prosecutor to have violated the human rights of Mr. Mateo Hernández Barajas for not having taken into consideration, as part of the pre-trial proceedings against Mr. Hernández, that according to the medical report issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office physician he bore a number of injuries; the injuries, which were presumably inflicted on him by Federal judicial police officers during his detention and which the official was required to certify, should have led to an investigation. Role of medical experts 147. The medical experts assigned to public attorneys’ offices do not appear to have the proper attitude as far as prevention or certification of torture is concerned. While some interviewees stated that they had been tortured after being examined by the expert, others said that the doctor had seen the marks of torture but had not inquired into their cause; or that the doctor had not certified them in writing or had not certified them properly; or that they had not said they had been tortured for fear of being tortured again. 148. In its recommendation 14/2000, the National Human Rights Commission stated: “The physician attached to the Public Prosecutor’s Office who first examined the complainant did not report to his superiors the irregularities complained of, which he should have certified so that an investigation would be opened.” In its recommendation 9/2001, the National Commission found that the physician attached to the Attorney-General’s Office in León Guanajuato had violated the human rights of a detainee by producing ambiguous medical reports in which his injuries were inadequately described, making it difficult to establish the manner or time in which they had been produced, and by failing to classify the injuries.