CAT/C/75 page 27 126. The Attorney-General of the Republic said that efforts were being made to eliminate the use of torture within his Office: it had been a serious problem but was now being dealt with. To that end an internal campaign had been launched and a training programme set up. The campaign included the establishment of a 24-hour telephone hotline which anyone could call to lodge a complaint. A serious commitment had also been made to combat impunity. There were currently some 400 investigations under way, a good many of which dealt with human rights violations. A sizable number of police officers had been dismissed and their names entered in the National Police Personnel Register so that they would not be taken on by other police forces. 2. State authorities (a) Federal District 127. The Federal District Attorney-General stated that he had no knowledge of any cases of torture occurring since he had taken office. There might have been some isolated cases but torture as a method of investigation had been eliminated years before. From 1996 to 2001 there had been reports of only 4 cases of torture, and of 2,017 cases of abuse of authority. In addition, eight recommendations concerning torture had been received from the State Human Rights Commission since its establishment. Of those, five had been followed, one rejected and in two other cases arrest warrants were pending. He stated that the Office was focusing on training its police officers. 128. The Director of Public Security of the Federal District stated that he had received no complaints of torture involving the Federal District preventive police. Since 1997 only one recommendation had been received from the Federal District Human Rights Commission in a case involving abuse of authority; none involving torture had been received. Unlike corruption, torture was not a problem in the department. It did not even have cells, and anyone detailed was immediately turned over to the judicial police. (b) Tamaulipas 129. The Director of the Tamaulipas judicial police denied that the force tortured detainees. He said that inspectors from the State Human Rights Commission regularly visited police cells and that supervision by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and internal checks by the police force itself prevented any use of torture. He said that false accusations were frequently made against the police, but he knew of no cases in which a police officer had been punished for torture. He added that detainees could see their lawyers at any time and that such meetings were held in private. 130. The State Attorney-General said that torture was not a problem in the State of Tamaulipas and that its use was unnecessary for the types of offences his Office addressed. On the other hand, there might be cases of excessive use of force when detentions were made. As it was obligatory to bring detainees before a judge almost immediately after arrest there was, practically speaking, no time to torture them. He said that, once the police had placed a detainee at the disposal of the public attorney’s office with written notice to that effect, the detainee was not returned to the police for further interrogation; that had been common practice in the past at