A/HRC/4/40/Add.4 page 20 79. A bill to create a separate, independent institution in charge of the penitentiary system was pending in the past legislature, and the Minister of Security informed the Working Group that the Government intends to revive this proposed legislation. The Working Group considers that this would constitute a very important step in the direction outlined in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the Constitution of Honduras. E. The situation of persons detained under the old criminal procedure code 80. The old criminal procedure code, providing for mandatory detention on remand and inquisitorial proceedings, continues to be applied to those who have been charged with an offence committed before the entry into force of the new system. The Working Group is conscious of the reasons underlying the decision not to automatically extend the limits on preventive detention established in the new code to all defendants in preventive detention at the time the new code entered into force. At that time, there were approximately 8,000 remand prisoners, and for many of them the maximum duration of remand detention under the new code had already been exceeded. Immediately applying the new code to their cases would have meant the release - from one day to the other - of several thousand persons accused of serious crimes and would have caused justified alarm in the population. 81. The current situation, however, is simply unbearable, as the discrimination between the two categories of prisoners lasts for more than four-and-a-half years by now. While the Working Group has not been able to obtain reliable figures concerning the number of remand detainees awaiting trial under the old criminal procedure code, they are no less than 1,800, and probably significantly more. These persons have been in detention without being found guilty of a crime for at least four-and-a-half years by now, in some cases identified by the Working Group more than 10 years. The old code applied to them sets no time limits for the duration of the proceedings in their case and for the duration of their detention, and does not provide for their right to challenge continued remand detention or for ex officio control over the need therefore. The Working Group has further been informed that some jueces de ejcución refuse to deal with cases of persons held under the old code on the argument that, as the juez de ejcución was only established by the new code, they cannot be competent to deal with detainees whose trial is governed by the old code. The Working Group was informed that this stance has been rejected by the Supreme Court in a recent decision, but it remains to be seen what fruits the Court’s decision will give in practice. 82. Instead of giving priority to the resolution of these cases, the prosecution and the courts are placing them “on the back burner”. While this strategy is supported by the legitimate aim of using the scarce resources of the criminal justice system to comply with the deadlines provided by the current criminal procedure code for remand detention, the result is a serious violation of the right to a fair trial, which includes the right to be tried expeditiously, for those 1,800 or more detainees held under the old code. Some interlocutors in the judiciary have pointed out to the Working Group that the transitional provisions governing the entry into force of the new code dictate that these cases shall be decided by the end of 2006. This laudable goal, however, is by now completely unrealistic, and there do not appear to be any serious efforts under way to attain it. On the contrary, the judicial authorities have informed the Working Group that they count on an extension of the deadline.