E/CN.4/2001/66/Add.1 page 5 recommendations, but also several decisions taken by the President, the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Plenary of the Supreme Court. The Minister of Justice indicated that this booklet would be widely distributed amongst law enforcement officials. He also stressed the importance of educating and disseminating relevant information to the public in general with respect to torture issues. According to the Minister, ordinary people had yet to understand that torture was an illegal and unacceptable practice. 9. The President of the Republic in his meeting with the Special Rapporteur recognized that there still existed some shortcomings, but he repeated his own commitment to take the necessary measures. In this context, he welcomed the visit of the Special Rapporteur to help him assess whether the decisions taken by higher officials were implemented on the ground. Similarly, a large number of officials met by the Special Rapporteur referred to findings of CAT as well as of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and stressed their willingness to tackle the problem, if any. Non-governmental sources recognized the Government’s recent resolve to end the practice of torture, even if the steps taken were still greeted with caution. For example, an extensive legal reform aimed at bringing the national legislation into line with international standards was under way at the time of the visit of the Special Rapporteur. Official interlocutors referred to the fact that international experts, in particular from the Council of Europe, were closely associated with that process. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Justice nevertheless recognized the need for legal reforms to be accompanied by structural changes in public offices. Efforts to change the approach and mentality of law enforcement officials were also stressed. In that respect, the Special Rapporteur noted with concern that non-governmental organizations seemed not to have been involved in this process of legal reform which was said to have taken place with a lack of transparency. The burden inherited from the Soviet period in terms of structures and habits was also often presented by officials as an obstacle to be overcome. 10. One of the main problems which was drawn to the Special Rapporteur’s attention was the high level of armed criminality that law enforcement authorities were said to have had to face after independence in 1991. The Minister of Internal Affairs said that around 18,000 firearms had been collected from the public between 1994 and 1996. He stressed that Azerbaijan was now one of the States of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) with the lowest rate of criminality. This was partly explained by the fact that, according to the Minister, over the last few years 90 per cent of crimes had been solved. B. Information concerning police stations and temporary detention facilities 1. General information 11. According to the legislation in force at the time of the mission, a person could be arrested and detained for up to three hours in a police station for identification purposes. After this identification period, the person must be transferred to one of the provisional detention (or isolation) wards, also called temporary detention facilities and formerly known as IVS, where she or he could be kept under investigation for up to three days. These places of detention are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the General Prosecutor, article 129 of the Criminal Code provides that for the most serious crimes, a prosecutor can extend this preliminary detention period for investigation purposes up to 10 days. He added that