E/CN.4/2002/77/Add.2 page 6 I. SUSPENSION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RULE OF LAW (1975-1999) 6. Following independence, proclaimed on 16 December 1971, Bahrain adopted a Constitution in 1973 that separated the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and instituted a National Assembly comprising 30 elected members and 14 ministers who were members ex officio. 7. Relations between the Government and the Assembly became strained in 1974, when the Government submitted a bill on state security measures which the elected members rejected. In response to this opposition, the Amir promulgated the draft by decree – the Legislative Decree on State Security Measures – on 22 October 1974, then dissolved the Assembly and suspended articles 43 to 82 of the Constitution which dealt with the legislature and elections. 8. This was the setting for the promulgation by decree No. 15/1976 of the 1976 Criminal Code, article 185 of which placed matters relating to State security under the jurisdiction of an emergency tribunal, the State Security Court. That Court, established by Legislative Decree No. 7/1976, had rules of procedure that differed from ordinary law; its jurisdiction was later, in 1986 and again in 1996, extended to other offences. 9. This emergency legislation underlay most of the decisions and opinions (six) in which, between 1996 and 2000, the Working Group found that the detention of 34 individuals whose cases had been brought to its attention was arbitrary. The Group held that the main provisions of the legislation so compromised the right to a fair trial as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character (category III in the Group’s revised methods of work). The provisions concerned were the following: (a) Article 7 of Legislative Decree No. 7/1976, stating “Court decision[s] shall be final and not subject to any kind of appeal”; (b) Article 5 of that Decree, empowering the Court to find an accused guilty solely on the strength of confessions obtained during the police investigation; (c) Article 1 of the Legislative Decree on State Security Measures of 22 October 1974, which empowered the Interior Minister, acting alone, to issue a ministerial order for the arrest and detention for up to three years of any individual on grounds relating to State security: no appeal against such a decision was permitted for the first three months, and thereafter appeals could be lodged only once every six months; (d) Article 7 of that Decree, which made it the rule, not the exception, that “the proceedings of the Court shall always be held in camera and shall only be attended by the prosecution, the complainant and his representatives”. 10. For further information on this matter, the delegation conducted interviews with former detainees – some released recently, others a while ago – and with lawyers who had practised at the State Security Court. This enabled it to amass a body of specific, consistent testimony confirming the nature of the violations reported by the Working Group in its communications, i.e. that they seriously compromised the right to a fair trial as defined in the Body of Principles