legality of the detention and to protect other fundamental rights of the detainee. Even in a state of emergency, minimum access to legal counsel and prescribed reasonable limits on the length of preventive detention remain mandatory. Moreover, national authorities have an obligation to prevent human rights abuses and to actively investigate and prosecute any allegation of practices which may involve the transfer or detention of individuals in a manner inconsistent with their obligations under international law. Particularly since 11 September 2001, some States have reportedly extradited, expelled, deported or otherwise transferred foreign nationals, some of them asylum-seekers, suspected of terrorism to their country of origin or to other countries where they allegedly face a risk of torture or ill-treatment, in violation of the principle of non-refoulement. This principle, set out in article 33 (1) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, is also recognized in other international instruments, most notably in article 3 of the Convention against Torture64 and in article 16 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. It is also reflected in article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Human Rights Committee, in its general comment N° 20 (1992), has interpreted to include an obligation on States not to expose individuals to “the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.”65 According to general comment N° 31, article 2 of the Covenant also entails an obligation on States “not to extradite, deport, expel or otherwise remove a person from their territory, where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm… either in the country to which removal is to be effected or in any country to which the person may subsequently be removed.” It is well established in international law that the prohibition of refoulement is absolute if there is a risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.66 However, this obligation also applies in cases involving a risk of irreparable harm and in cases of arbitrary deprivation of life (including undue imposition of the death penalty), enforced disappearance, torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and exposure to a manifestly unfair trial. The transfer of an individual which takes place outside the rule of law and without due process may lead to a number of human rights violations, notably infringements of the right to liberty and security of the person, the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment, the right to recognition everywhere as an individual 34