E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.5 page 9 included beatings with sticks on the legs, piercing of legs with metal rods, beatings with rifle butts on ankles, and mutilations such as amputation of toes. In view of the short duration of the mission, the Special Rapporteur was unable to establish direct contacts with representatives of the Maoists and visit detention facilities under their control. Legal safeguards for arrest and detention 20. Notwithstanding the legal guarantees cited by the Government in its report to the Committee against Torture, the Special Rapporteur found wide disparities between these formal guarantees and what actually happens in practice. Routinely, basic requirements are not respected by the police, armed police or the RNA, such as timely access to a lawyer, bringing suspects before a judge within 24 hours of arrest, or medical examinations upon arrest or transfer. Several examples were brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur of individuals who were released on the order of the Supreme Court, were immediately apprehended by security forces personnel within the compound of the Court itself and spirited away to barracks to be detained again. The Special Rapporteur also observed that detainee registers are poorly kept, if at all, at police offices and army barracks. Preventive detention 21. According to the Special Rapporteur, legislation such as the 2004 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO) and the 1989 Public Security Act (PSA) effectively provide the police and the military with sweeping powers to detain suspects for preventive reasons, sometimes for months on end. PSA allows for preventive detention for 90 days by order of an administrative officer. It can be extended for 6 months with further authorization from the Home Ministry and another 6 months subject to approval of an Advisory Board; similarly, TADO provides for preventive detention for up to 12 months. 22. The Special Rapporteur has received a large number of allegations relating to persons taken involuntarily by security forces and who are being held incommunicado at unknown locations. There is an inextricable link between these enforced disappearances and torture. The Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly stated that “prolonged incommunicado detention or detention in secret places may facilitate the perpetration of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and can in itself constitute a form of such treatment”.3 The Human Rights Committee has established that prolonged periods of incommunicado detention in itself constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment for both the detainees and their families.4 Moreover, in the experience of the Special Rapporteur, it is during this initial period in custody when the risk of torture to extract confessions is highest. Of great concern to the Special Rapporteur is that the right of habeas corpus is denied by virtue of article 14 (7) of the Constitution to any person who is arrested or detained by any law providing for preventive detention, although throughout his meetings with government, police and military officials, he was cited references to due process safeguards contained in preventive detention legislation and the right of the Supreme Court to issue habeas corpus writs with respect to preventive detention (article 88 of the Constitution), which, they argued, were effective in preventing and deterring any case of arbitrary detention or torture. However, from the many victims and lawyers he spoke with, it was plain to the Special Rapporteur that these safeguards are largely illusory in practice; preventive detention is systematically rubber-stamped by the Chief District Officer - the