Seeking Remedies for Torture Victims: A Handbook on the Individual Complaints Procedures of the UN Tready Bodies 2.3.5 The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was established in 1991, by the former Commission on Human Rights.481 It is mandated to investigate instances, and the phenomenon, of arbitrary detention. Examples of such detention include where an individual has been imprisoned without an arrest warrant and without being charged or tried by an independent judicial authority, or without access to a lawyer, or where he or she has been detained without the fundamental guarantee of a fair trial. Arbitrary detention is prohibited under Article 9 of the ICCPR. It facilitates or makes a person more vulnerable to acts of torture or other ill-treatment. The mandate of the Working Group was most recently extended for a further three-year period by Resolution 24/7 of 26 September 2013.482 The Working Group is made up of five independent experts who meet three times per year for a period of five to eight working days.483 “Detention” is defined in Commission Resolution No. 1997/50 as any “deprivation of liberty”, and includes instances of arrest, apprehension, detention, incarceration, prison, reclusion, custody and remand. It extends to a “deprivation of freedom either before, during or after the trial … as well as deprivation of freedom in the absence of any kind of trial (administrative detention)”, as well as house arrest.484 The Working Group has adopted the following criteria in determining whether a detention is arbitrary: a. When it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (as when a person is kept in detention after the completion of his sentence or despite an amnesty law applicable to him). b. When the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights or freedoms guaranteed by Articles 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, insofar as States parties are concerned, by Articles 12, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. c. When the total or partial non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial, spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned, is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character.485 481 UN Commission on Human Rights, Resolution 1991/42. 482 Human Rights Council, Resolution 24/7 (Arbitrary Detention), (2013) UN Doc. A/HRC/24/L.15. 483 UN Fact Sheet No. 26, “The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention”, Part III, available at: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet26en.pdf. 484 Ibid., Part IV. 148