A/HRC/7/3/Add.2 page 86 citizens, coverage of the rights to liberty and security and provisions permitting derogation of rights during a state of emergency. 432. Section 15 (2) of the State Cases Act requires that arrested persons be produced before the “appropriate authority” within24 hours, and prohibits any person from being held for a longer period without orders of such authority. In practice, detainees in police custody are often held beyond the stipulated 24 hours without appearing before the relevant authority. OHCHR has also documented many cases where detainees have not been provided with letters of arrest/detention, and where juveniles have been detained in inappropriate conditions. Some of these irregularities have been remedied by police when OHCHR has visited police stations subsequently. In other cases, irregularities persist. 433. The most serious cases of illegal detention by Nepal Police relate to four individuals accused of involvement in three bombings in Kathmandu in September 2007. The four were held in secret, unacknowledged detention for up to 11 days. During that time, police denied to OHCHR that they were holding them. Despite information gathered that confirmed their arrest on 10/11 September, police subsequently recorded the arrest date as the day on which they were presented to a judge. They were reportedly beaten while held in unacknowledged detention, and reportedly signed, under duress, “confessions” or documents which they were unable to read. 434. The Armed Police Force (APF) has become increasingly involved in arrests related to armed groups, and some detainees were illegally held and interrogated by the APF for short periods in the Terai districts of the Central and Eastern Regions. The APF do not have powers to detain or interrogate. The deployment of Special Task Forces of combined Nepal Police and APF to the Terai and to Kathmandu Valley in December has raised certain concerns also about legal procedures for arrests and detention. 435. OHCHR was also concerned about certain amendments, adopted in August 2007, to the Local Administration Act 1971 (LAA) which could be used in the future to limit freedom of assembly and the right to due process. The amendments empower each Chief District Officer (CDO) to ban gatherings, and fine and imprison anyone committing acts of obstruction or violating bans on gatherings. Given the vagueness of the terms used and the significant discretion involved, the new provisions of the LAA could potentially be used to arbitrarily detain demonstrators, suppress non-violent assemblies and other peaceful expressions of opinion. Granting the CDO the power to fine and imprison also raises concerns in relation to individuals’ right to a fair trial in terms of a hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal. 436. According to the Government, the Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Control and Punishment) Ordinance (TADO) has already been nullified. Those being prosecuted on different charges under the Criminal Code are in process of judicial trials. Some detainees were kept in Army Barracks at the time of conflict for their own security. The security personnel were not found to have been involved in torture and ill-treatment of TADO detainees (see A/HRC/4/33/Add.2, para. 425).