E/CN.4/2006/120 page 11 requirement in article 9 (4) of ICCPR that “[a]nyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful”, or the requirements of article 14 of ICCPR, as: (a) The CSRTs and ARBs do not comprise the guarantees of independence essential to the notions of a “court” (art. 9 (4)) or “exercise of judicial power” (art. 9 (3)); (b) Detainees’ defence counsel whom the mandate holders met raised serious concerns regarding CSRT and ARB procedural rules, which do not provide the detainees with a defence counsel.28 Moreover, the restrictions on detainees’ right to be present at hearings in their case and on their access to the information and evidence on which the allegation that they are unlawful belligerents is based undermine the legality and legitimacy of the process; (c) The interviews conducted by the mandate holders with detainees corroborated allegations that the purpose of the detention of most of the detainees is not to bring criminal charges against them but to extract information from them on other terrorism suspects. Indeed, four years after the establishment of the detention facility, none of the inmates has been tried and the proceedings of only nine persons detained at Guantánamo Bay are close to the trial stage;29 (d) It would appear that in determining the status of detainees the CSRT has recourse to the concepts recently and unilaterally developed by the United States Government, and not to the existing international humanitarian law regarding belligerency and combatant status; and (e) Even where the CSRT determines that the detainee is not an “enemy combatant” and should no longer be held, as in the case of the Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay nine months after the CSRT determined that they should be freed, release might not ensue.30 29. The concerns raised by the shortcomings of the CSRT and ARB procedures are aggravated by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which provides that “no court, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider (1) an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba”.31 The exception hereto is that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia retains jurisdiction to determine the validity of any final decision of a CSRT. However, the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals only extends to examining whether the procedures were properly followed, and not to the merits of the CSRT decision.32 E. The right to be tried by a competent and independent tribunal 30. Article 14 (1) of ICCPR states that in criminal proceedings “everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law”.33 The Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary also recognize that “everyone shall have the right to be tried by ordinary courts or tribunals using established legal procedures. Tribunals that do not use the duly established procedures of the legal process shall not be created to displace the jurisdiction belonging to the ordinary courts or judicial tribunals”.34 The Military