groups,” the Working Group noted that “this kind of police action has the effect of intimidating average citizens.”30 29. The Working Group also referred to irregular police procedures and, in this regard, indicated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had “uncovered many cases involving police officers who, eager to demonstrate their effectiveness in combatting the crime wave, had invented and fabricated cases by detaining innocent individuals after reporting the successful prosecution of an offence.” The Working Group indicated that the “pattern in these cases is to take the individuals to a particular place, “plant” evidence, accuse them of theft, and so on […]” and that, in this situation, the “ability of the victims of such situations to defend themselves is virtually non-existent, since most of them are from the most vulnerable groups on the fringes of society: the unemployed, beggars, illegal immigrants or individuals with a police record.”31 In this regard, it recommended that Argentina “[…] monitor closely the behaviour of senior and junior police officers, particularly with regard to their powers of arrest and detention,” and “any manifestation of racist, xenophobic, homophobic or other behaviour that is incompatible with the full observance of human rights – which the police are expected to enforce – should be punished.”32 30. Similarly, in 2010, the UN Committee expressed its concern “at the subsistence of legislation giving the police the power to detain persons […] who they have not apprehended in the act of committing an offence, and to do so without a warrant or subsequent judicial review, for the sole stated purpose of verifying their identity, in violation of, inter alia, the principle of the presumption of innocence […].”33 In 2016, the Committee reiterated “its concern about the police practice, and the regulation under which it is permitted, of taking people into custody without a warrant in order to verify their identity and then detaining them for lengthy periods of time […],” and recommended that the State “take all necessary steps, including the adoption of legislative measures, to put an end to the practice of detaining persons when such detention is not related to the commission of an offence.”34 31. Similarly, in a report on a visit to Argentina in 2017, the Working Group referred to the “wide powers of the police to deprive persons of liberty based on either the suspicion of the commission of a crime or for verification of identification” and observed “the same in relation to the inherent powers of the police to ‘withhold’ persons in order to carry out identity checks.” The Working Group indicated that: The possibility of arresting someone on the basis of a suspicion of a crime being carried out is widely used in a discriminatory and subjective manner, namely towards those in situations of vulnerability, such as street children, members and leaders of indigenous communities, migrants, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons and others.35 32. In 2012, the Ombudsman of the city of Buenos Aires indicated that, in most cases, the use of the mechanism of “detention to carry out identity checks” was automatic, and that “the UN, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Report on visit to Argentina, E/CN.4/2004/3/Add.3, December 23, 2003, paras. 42, 43 and 46. 30 31 UN, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Report on visit to Argentina, supra, paras. 47 and 48. 32 UN, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Report on visit to Argentina, supra, para. 71. UN, Human Rights Committee, Concluding observations on Argentina, CCPR/C/ARG/CO/4, March 31, 2010, para. 15. 33 UN, Human Rights Committee, Concluding observations on Argentina, CCPR/C/ARG/CO/5, August 10, 2016, paras. 17 and 18. 34 UN, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Report on visit to Argentina, A/HRC/39/45/Add.1, July 19, 2018, paras. 26 and 27. 35 11