techniques, such a law should explicitly prohibit all forms of treatment
prohibited by article 7.
[…]
A specific concern of the Committee is that at least some of the persons kept in
administrative detention for reasons of State security … do not personally
threaten State security but are kept as "bargaining chips" in order to promote
negotiations with other parties on releasing detained … soldiers or the bodies of
deceased soldiers. The Committee considers the present application of
administrative detention to be incompatible with articles 7 and 16 of the
Covenant, neither of which allows for derogation in times of public emergency.
--CCPR/C/79/Add.93, paras. 19, 21 (1998).
*****
The Committee against Torture has also referred to the non-derogable nature of the
right to freedom from torture:
[A] State party to the Convention [against Torture] … is precluded from raising
before [the] Committee [against Torture] exceptional circumstances as
justification for acts prohibited by article 1 of the Convention. This is plainly
expressed in article 2 of the Convention.
-- A/52/44, para. 258 (1997).
*****
[U]nder article 2, paragraph 2, of the Convention [against Torture], no
exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war,
internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a
justification for torture.
--A/51/44, paras.180-222 (1997), Inquiry under Article 20.
*****
The Human Rights Committee observed, in its General Comment No. 20, that
prolonged solitary confinement in itself may constitute a violation of the right to
freedom from torture and from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment:
[T]he Committee notes that prisoners may be segregated [in the State party] as a
preventive measure for the protection of security, the maintenance of order or to
33
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