E/CN.4/1999/63/Add.2 page 32 B. Recommendations To the Government of Peru 175. All measures should be taken to re-establish tenure for judges and prosecutors, without discrimination for political or other reasons. To this end, the powers of the National Council of the Judiciary should be restored immediately. 176. The Committee on Pardons should hand down its recommendations more speedily. Although this is not an orthodox means of re-establishing the guarantees to personal freedom and to a fair trial, it has proven useful. The Working Group encourages the President to continue to support this Committee. In any event, the Working Group believes that attention should focus on cases of military justice, which has, contrary to what the President of the Supreme Council of Military Justice (CSJM) believes, been responsible for many innocent prisoners and arbitrary detentions. It would be wise to adopt the bill submitted on 22 May 1997 so that a pardon will result in the trial and the sentence being removed from the records, as if the beneficiary had never been charged with an offence. Arrest warrants should have an expiry date and the cases of the persons “wanted for questioning” should be referred to the Committee on Pardons. 177. With regard to the prison system, judges must be stricter in exercising the powers conferred on them by articles 135 and 137 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, relating to the pre-trial release of detainees. They should also try to make better and more frequent use of alternatives to deprivation of freedom. Prison conditions should be made more humane, especially with regard to visits and access to reading materials and other types of cultural expression. To the international community 178. The Commission on Human Rights cannot remain indifferent to the injustices committed by military courts in many countries, as this has become a universal problem of the utmost seriousness. The Working Group shares the reservations expressed in the report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers (para. 78) about General Comment No. 13 of the Human Rights Committee. As the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Cumaraswamy, states: “international law is developing a consensus as to the need to restrict drastically, or even prohibit, that practice”. 179. A joint study which would be carried out with the participation of regional and universal international organizations and all bodies belonging to the United Nations system with a contribution to make, as well as of human rights and lawyers' and judges' organizations, and would lead to an intergovernmental conference aimed at eradicating this form of injustice is a specific recommendation formulated by the Working Group in this report. 180. The Working Group is of the opinion that, if some form of military justice is to continue to exist, it should observe four rules: (a) Incompetence to try civilians;