Manfred Nowak, the United Nations' special investigator on torture, has just finished a trip to China. He says the Chinese government interfered with his factfinding efforts and he says that torture is still rampant in China.

China officially outlawed torture in 1996.

In a prepared statement he said, "Victims and family members were intimidated by security personnel during the visit, placed under surveillance, instructed not to meet with him or physically prevented from meeting with him."

Nowak arrived in China on November 21, following a decade-long UN effort to send an investigator to look into claims of torture and mistreatment by Chinese authorities.

Prior to his arrival, Novak praised China's leaders for acknowledging the widespread abuse of prisoners in the nation's jails.

He said Beijing had originally offered him freer access to detainees than the United States was prepared to give him on a recently scrapped trip to Guantanamo Bay. However now that his trip has ended, he says he was indeed not granted full access.

"There is a growing awareness that torture is quite widely practised in the common criminal proceedings by the police and that something needs to be done," Mr Nowak said in an interview during his visit. "I see my visit also as part of this growing awareness."

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