CAT/C/75 page 45 215. In their meetings with representatives of the Attorney-General and the Military Prosecutor, the Committee members tried to find out how the internal inspection services went about investigating cases of torture, but the information they were given was generally extremely vague. Claims that all reports filed against members of the police forces were thoroughly investigated were not borne out by specific, detailed instances. On the contrary, the President of the National Human Rights Commission affirmed that the inspectors covered up inappropriate behaviour by officials and found no fault in most cases. 216. The Committee members also think the non-governmental organizations are correct in their criticism that, since the Public Prosecutor’s Office has the monopoly on criminal proceedings, reports of torture are dealt with by the very body they are directed against. This may also be the main reason why victims invariably turn to the human rights commissions to mediate on their behalf instead of going, as one would expect, straight to the body that ought to initiate criminal investigations. 217. The fact that only an extremely small number of cases of torture reach the courts was confirmed in the meetings that Committee members had with representatives of the judiciary, who appeared “unaware” that torture continued to occur in Mexico. The Public Prosecutor’s Office’s monopoly on criminal proceedings may partly explain their lack of awareness. The representatives of the Tamaulipas State High Court affirmed that torture was not a problem in Tamaulipas, and that seven cases of abuse of authority had come before the Court over the past two years, but none of torture. The president of the Guerrero High Court said it was rare for the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate cases of torture, and he had not heard of more than two or three such instances. The justices of the Supreme Court said that cases of “torment” might crop up, but only a tiny number compared with the number of criminal prosecutions in the country, and fewer still at the Federal level. VI. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 218. From the information gathered during their visit to Mexico, the Committee members note that the number of complaints of torture referred to public human rights bodies and NGOs appears to have declined in the last few years. However, the information collected in the course of this procedure, which has not been refuted by the Government; the descriptions of the torture cases, most of which occurred in the months preceding the visit and during the previous year information received directly from the victims; the similarity of circumstances in which the cases arose; the purpose of the torture (nearly always to obtain information or a self-incriminating confession); the similarity of the methods employed; and the fact that such methods are widespread, all convinced the Committee members that these are not exceptional situations or occasional violations committed by a few police officers but that, on the contrary, the police commonly use torture and resort to it systematically as another method of criminal investigation, readily available whenever required in order to advance the process. In this regard, the Committee members recall the views expressed by the Committee in November 199350 and repeated in May 200151 on the main factors that indicate that torture is systematically practised in a State party. These views are as follows: “The Committee considers that torture is practised systematically when it is apparent that the torture cases reported have not occurred fortuitously in a particular place or at a particular time, but are seen to be habitual, widespread and deliberate in at