74 OTHMAN (ABU QATADA) v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.” A. The parties’ submissions 1. The Government 227. The Government did not accept that Article 5 could be relied in an expulsion case (the Court had doubted that it could be in Tomic v. the United Kingdom (dec.), 17837/03, 14 October 2003). Even if it could, no issue arose in the present case because the applicant would not be detained for a lengthy period before being brought before a court. SIAC had found that it was likely he would be brought before a “judicial authority” within 48 hours, even if this were only a prosecutor with judicial status. The report of Mr Al-Khalili and Mr Najdawi confirmed that the Public Prosecutor was a judicial officer; they had also reported that the 48 hour period in which the police had to notify the legal authorities of any arrest had been reduced to 24 hours (see paragraphs 95 and 96 above). SIAC had also found that extensions of detention up to fifty days were unlikely to be sought (see paragraph 41 above). Both of SIAC’s findings had been upheld by the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. In the House of Lords, Lord Phillips had also found that 50 days’ detention fell far short of a flagrant breach of Article 5 (see paragraph 58 above) and, although they did not accept that detention for fifty days was likely, the Government relied upon his conclusion. 228. The Government also stated that the assurance in the MOU that the applicant would be brought promptly before a judge applied not only to any detention prior to re-trial for the offences for which he had been convicted in absentia but to any other period of detention in Jordan. Finally, since they did not accept that the applicant’s retrial would be a flagrant denial of justice, the Government considered that no issue arose under Article 5 in respect of any sentence of imprisonment that might imposed upon the applicant. 2. The applicant 229. The applicant submitted that the evidence showed Islamist prisoners were routinely detained incommunicado for up to fifty days, at the order of the Public Prosecutor. Such a period far exceeded the time limits which had been set by the Court (Brogan and Others v. the United Kingdom, 29 November 1988, §§ 61-62, Series A no. 145-B; Öcalan, cited above, § 103) and which were acceptable in international law (see paragraph 155 above). It was also contrary to this Court’s case-law and international law for a public prosecutor who had conduct of the investigation to be