relation to the grounds upon which the requested State Party may refuse to
grant mutual legal assistance or may make it subject to conditions.
Article 15
States Parties shall cooperate with each other and shall afford one
another the greatest measure of mutual assistance with a view to assisting
victims of enforced disappearance, and in searching for, locating and releasing
disappeared persons and, in the event of death, in exhuming and identifying
them and returning their remains.
Article 16
1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”), surrender or extradite a
person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that
he or she would be in danger of being subjected to enforced disappearance.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the
competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations,
including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a
consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights or of
serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Article 17
1.
No one shall be held in secret detention.
2. Without prejudice to other international obligations of the State Party
with regard to the deprivation of liberty, each State Party shall, in its legislation:
(a) Establish the conditions under which orders of deprivation of liberty
may be given;
(b)
liberty;
Indicate those authorities authorized to order the deprivation of
(c) Guarantee that any person deprived of liberty shall be held solely in
officially recognized and supervised places of deprivation of liberty;
(d) Guarantee that any person deprived of liberty shall be authorized to
communicate with and be visited by his or her family, counsel or any other
person of his or her choice, subject only to the conditions established by law,
or, if he or she is a foreigner, to communicate with his or her consular
authorities, in accordance with applicable international law;
(e) Guarantee access by the competent and legally authorized
authorities and institutions to the places where persons are deprived of liberty,
if necessary with prior authorization from a judicial authority;
(f) Guarantee that any person deprived of liberty or, in the case of a
suspected enforced disappearance, since the person deprived of liberty is not
able to exercise this right, any persons with a legitimate interest, such as
relatives of the person deprived of liberty, their representatives or their counsel,
shall, in all circumstances, be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in
order that the court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of the
deprivation of liberty and order the person’s release if such deprivation of
liberty is not lawful.
3. Each State Party shall assure the compilation and maintenance of
one or more up-to-date official registers and/or records of persons deprived of
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