CCPR/C/116/D/2297/2013 Annex Individual (concurring) opinion by Olivier de Frouville, Yadh Ben Achour, Mauro Politi and Víctor Manuel Rodríguez-Rescia 1. We agree with the Committee’s finding that the author’s incommunicado detention for 20 days violated articles 7 and 9 of the Covenant, read alone and in conjunction with article 2, paragraph 3. However, for the reasons set out in another individual opinion,a we consider that such incommunicado detention removes the person from the protection of the law and constitutes a denial of the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law, in violation of article 16 of the Covenant. 2. The author did not raise this claim explicitly and the Committee chose not to raise it of its own motion, although it recalled its jurisprudence, which “recognizes the degree of suffering involved in being held indefinitely without contact with the outside world”.b We note, however, that the author described the treatment that he suffered as an “enforced disappearance” (paras. 5.1 and 5.9). By its very nature, enforced disappearance removes the victim from the protection of the law and denies them their right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.c The claim under article 16 was therefore implicit in the author’s argumentation and we consider that the Committee should have raised it of its own motion and found a violation, given the importance of the right in question and its inviolable nature. a b c GE.16-07656 See the individual (partly dissenting) opinion of Olivier de Frouville, Yadh Ben Achour and Mauro Politi appended to the Committee’s Views in Lumbala Tshidika v. Democratic Republic of the Congo, communication No. 2214/2012, Views adopted on 5 November 2015. See, for example, the Committee’s Views in Aboufaied v. Libya, communication No. 1782/2008, Views adopted on 21 March 2012, para. 7.2. See, for example, the general comment of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which describes enforced disappearance as representing “a paradigmatic violation of the right to be recognized as a person before the law” (A/HRC/19/58/Rev.1, para. 42); article 1, paragraph 2, of the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; and article 2 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. At the regional level, see, for example inter alia, the judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Anzualdo Castro v. Peru, judgment of 22 September 2009, Series C, No. 202, paras. 90 and 91. 15