bringing him before a judge and without the necessary legal safeguards as prescribed by article 14 of the Covenant.” In addition, it regretted “the lack of clarification regarding the level of evidence needed for an ‘arraigo’ order.” The Committee underscored that persons detained under “arraigo” are exposed to ill-treatment (Arts. 9 and 14 of the Covenant). It added that the State “should take all necessary measures to remove “arraigo” detention from legislation and practice at both federal and state levels.” 128 154. For its part, the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT) recommended that Mexico “abolish arraigo, which creates a situation outside judicial control that constitutes a risk of torture and ill-treatment.” 129 The SPT also took note that, under Article 12 of the Federal Law to Combat Organized Crime of 1996, “a judge, at the request of the Office of the Public Prosecutor, may order the detention under arraigo of a person charged with participating in organized crime. This practice entails placing the suspect under the continual surveillance of the Office of the Public Prosecutor with the aim of increasing the time available to investigate the responsibility of the accused person.” The SPT also indicated that, under the reform, “the maximum time during which a person can be held under arraigo is 80 days and that such persons are generally held in so-called ‘safe houses.’” 130 155. With regard to the above, it should be remembered that the SPT held that arraigo in Mexico “has become a practice that keeps legal proceedings stalled in limbo for excessive periods of time and creates obstacles to defence and to the determination of the legal status of the person detained under arraigo (regardless of the term used to describe this situation).” 131 v. Conclusion 156. In view of the above, the institution of arraigo established in Article 12 of the Federal Law of 1996, as well as in Article 133 bis of the Federal Code of 1999, presented various problems with respect to the Convention: a) it did not permit that persons subjected to arraigo were heard by a judicial authority before the measure that restricted their personal liberty or freedom to circulate (supra para. 130); b) it restricted the liberty of persons without having sufficient elements to formally link them to a specific offense (supra para. 125); c) in the case of the Federal Law of 1996, it did not refer to the substantive assumptions that must be complied with in order to apply that type of restrictive measure to personal liberty and to the presumption of innocence (supra para. 142); d) the objective of a measure that restricts liberty found in Article 12 is not compatible with the legitimate purposes necessary to restrict personal liberty under the Court’s case law (supra para. 144) and e) it affects the right of persons subjected to arraigo not to be compelled to be a witness against themselves (supra para. 134). On the other hand, some domestic and international instances refer precisely to these points and conclude that arraigo contravenes various fundamental rights, such as the rights to personal liberty, to due process and to the presumption of innocence (supra paras. 149 to 155). 157. For these reasons, the Court finds that Article 12 of the Federal Law against Organized Crime of 1996 and Article 133 bis of the Federal Code of Criminal Procedure of 1999 that refer to arraigo and that were applied in the present case contain provisions that, per se, contravene various rights established in the Convention, such as the rights not to be arbitrarily deprived of liberty (Art. 7(3)), to judicial control of the deprivation of liberty and to the reasonability of the period of pre-trial detention (Art. 7(5)), to a hearing (Art. 8(1)), to the presumption of innocence (Art. 8(2)) and not to be compelled to be a witness against oneself (Art.8(2)(g)). The Court concludes, thus, that the State infringed its obligation to adopt provisions of domestic law, as established in Article 2, regarding the 128 Cf. UN, Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee of April 7,2006, CCPR/C/MEX/CO/8, para. 15. Cf. UN, Report on the visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to Mexico (May 31 2010), CAT/OP/MEX/1, para. 215. 129 Cf. UN, Report on the visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to Mexico (May 31, 2010), CAT/OP/MEX/1, para. 214. 130 Cf. UN, Report on the visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to Mexico (May 31, 2010), CAT/OP/MEX/1, para. 212. 131 37

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