A/HRC/40/CRP.1 during their interrogations that their phone calls and communications had routinely been tapped prior to their arrests. During some interrogations, a member of the NSS Legal Department is present. The National Security Service Act provides that the functions of the NSS’s Legal Department include acting as an ombudsman and ensuring that cases being handled by the service are expedited and promptly referred to court; attending to complaints within and without the service and advising on the best practices regarding the constitution and human rights; and checking excesses of power, receiving and forwarding complaints of employees within the service to the Complaints Board.410 However, the presence of NSS lawyers during interrogations does not appear to have ensured that human rights and the Constitution were respected or to have checked excesses of power. On the contrary, there are cases in which it appears that members of the NSS Legal Department may themselves have been complicit in violations of fundamental freedoms. Furthermore, many detainees reported never even being questioned or investigated at all during their detention, indicating that there was no effort to follow due process to even ascertain if those detained might have committed an offence. One witness told the Commission: I didn’t find out the reasons for my detention until […] months after I had been arrested. There were even times when I wished for an interrogation so that I could at least understand why I had been detained.411 Many witnesses with whom the Commission spoke were unable to answer why they had been arrested and detained, even with the benefit of hindsight. The fact that they had not been told why they were arrested so that they could defend themselves weighed heavily on their minds and came up repeatedly during interviews. One witness to whom the Commission spoke mused: I am still trying to figure out how the NSS can detain people for prolonged periods without taking them to a court of law… I thought that within their laws, the NSS could only detain a person for 24 hours or something like that before he or she had to be taken to court… There were even some inmates who had been detained since 2014 without being charged. Then, the NSS simply released them in the market to go out into the world without knowing why they had been kept there in the first place. 412 4. Detention Facilities and their Conditions Witnesses described detention conditions which varied between NSS and SPLA Military Intelligence detention facilities. However, on the basis of their descriptions, hardly any of these facilities meet the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Nelson Mandela Rules) which provide that “General living conditions addressed in these rules, including those related to light, ventilation, temperature, sanitation, nutrition, drinking water, access to open air and physical exercise, personal hygiene, health care and adequate personal space, shall apply to all prisoners without exception.” 413 The facilities also failed to meet the standards set out in regional guidance such as Guidelines on the Conditions of Arrest, Police Custody and Pre-Trial Detention in Africa.414 In this regard, the Commission notes that the Code of Criminal Procedure Act (2008) provides that an arrested person shall have the right to obtain a reasonable amount of food stuff, clothing and cultural materials, at his or her own cost, subject to the conditions relating to security and public order.”415 The Commission has mapped the detention locations discussed below at Figure 3 at the end of this section. 410 National Security Services Act (2014), section 18(2). Witness 964, ERN 102148-102171, para. 52. 412 Witness 852, ERN 102054-102080, para. 68. 413 United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (2015), Rule 42. 414 African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Guidelines on the Conditions of Arrest, Police Custody and Pre-Trial Detention in Africa (2014). 415 Code of Criminal Procedure Act (2008), section 93(5). 411 59