CCPR/C/130/D/2818/2016 Annex Individual opinion of José Manuel Santos Pais (partially dissenting) 1. I concur with the conclusion reached in the Committee’s Views that the State party held the author unlawfully in solitary confinement on 16 and 17 November 2009, exceeding by two days the limit defined in domestic law to that effect (28 days), therefore violating the author’s rights under article 9 (1) of the Covenant (para. 7.2).1 The Supreme Court of the State party, however, when noticing it, by its decision of 17 November 2009, immediately ordered the cessation of solitary confinement and placed the author in continued detention. 2. I do not agree, though, with the Committee’s conclusion that, since the State party failed to provide an individualized justification for why the author was kept in solitary confinement, such confinement was, as a whole, arbitrary and therefore violated the author’s rights under article 9 (1) of the Covenant (para. 7.3). In my view, this conclusion does not match the facts in the present case. 3. This a case of trafficking in human beings, involving five co-defendants not nationals of the State party suspected of belonging to a criminal organization (there were also suspicions of racketeering, arson and swindling – para. 2.6). The criminal investigation and subsequent trial was concluded in scarcely five months, from 18 October to 29 December 2009, in spite of its complexity, the need for international cooperation and the noncooperative attitude of the author, who alleged never to have met the victim Y. On 29 December 2009, charges were brought against the author (para. 4.5) and on 8 March 2010 the author was sentenced to five years of imprisonment (para. 2.6). The Supreme Court later reduced the sentence to four years of imprisonment (para. 2.8), of which the author served only two years before being removed from the State party’s territory and taken to his country of origin in October 2011 (para. 2.9). In any criminal jurisdiction, this should be considered an example of due diligence by a criminal court and a remarkable achievement in itself in a case of trafficking in human beings. 4. The detention of the author was subjected to continuous judicial review, 17 decisions having been rendered in this regard by the domestic courts, eight of which by the Supreme Court, which normally just took between two and five days to issue its decisions. The standard of this Committee has always been that it is generally for the courts of a State party to the Covenant to review the facts and the evidence, or the application of domestic legislation, in a particular case, unless it can be shown that the evaluation or application in question was clearly arbitrary or amounted to a manifest error or to a denial of justice, or that the court otherwise violated its obligation of independence and impartiality. In my view, none of these circumstances apply in the present case. 5. The author, of Lithuanian nationality, was arrested on 18 October 2009 and immediately informed that he was suspected of human trafficking. He was brought that same day before the Reykjanes District Court, which ordered the author to be detained in solitary confinement until 21 October 2009, at which point the solitary confinement order was extended until 28 October 2009. 6. The pattern of the court decisions is identical: the author, in the presence of his defence counsel and an interpreter, was informed of the claim – he himself acknowledges, in page 17 of his complaint, that he was suspected of trafficking in human beings, making his allegations of a violation of article 14 (3) of the Covenant totally unsubstantiated (para. 4.20); the grounds for his detention were presented by the prosecution or the police; the defence counsel intervened afterwards; and the court then issued its decision, subjecting the author either to solitary confinement or, later, to continued confinement. 7. In its first decision, of 18 October 2009, the court determined that the accused should be subjected to solitary confinement, in accordance with article 99 (1) (b) of the Code of 1 12 Unless otherwise indicated, paragraph numbers in parentheses refer to the Committee’s Views.