A/HRC/40/CRP.1 Extrajudicial execution while in detention is not limited to Juba. The Commission was also told about killings at the prison in the SPLA military base in Yei where detainees are also held in containers. The Commission was told: When they want to kill you, they take you out of the container. There is one excavator who will dig a big hole. The militaries will take the first five in the line and instruct them to line in front of the hole. A group of militaries with guns will line in front of them and start shooting, some other militaries will use panga, it’s a machete and hit, cut people. So, they all fall into the hole. Some fell alive before being hit by panga. Then the militaries gave order to the excavator to close the hole. Some people were buried alive. I saw that several times.438 In cases where a detainee died inside the NSS Blue House detention facility, the corpse would sometimes be taken to the post-mortem section of Juba Teaching Hospital, where the deceased’s relatives would be given a phone call and told their relative was sick. This was intended to prepare the family members for what they would encounter when they arrived. The NSS would then offer the family money for the deceased’s funeral expenses and use its vehicles to transport the body to any location the family requested. The Commission was told that in instances where people were killed or died at the Giada detention facility, the bodies would sometimes be buried, but often they would be thrown in the Nile River. Other detainees were sometimes made to help dispose of the bodies in the Nile. 7. Enforced Disappearance Many of the NSS and SPLA detention facilities do not appear to keep complete registers of those in their custody, do not allow visitors including family and lawyers, and do not communicate with families about the whereabouts of detainees. Indeed, the Giada SPLA military detention facility is the only detention facility in relation to which the Commission consistently received information about relatives having access to and communication with their relatives. The result is that when people are detained for weeks, months and years, no one knows whether they remain in detention or have died. They have in effect disappeared. In this regard, the Commission notes that the Code of Criminal Procedure Act (2008) requires that a register of all arrests be kept at every police station. 439 While this applies to police stations, it should apply to all places of detention. This does not appear to be the consistent practice even in official detention facilities, although some witnesses recounted being registered in the NSS Blue House. In this regard, one witness explained that an acquaintance had tried to locate him after his arrest: “he had even called some NSS officers he knew personally to search the different locations where they detain people and check the registries for my name. However, since nothing was recorded about my arrest, the NSS officers couldn’t locate me.”440 While this applies generally to all locations of detention, it is particularly a problem in relation to unofficial places of detention. The Commission has documented at least five individual cases of detainees in the NSS Blue House who were removed in the middle of the night and who have never been seen or heard from again, including two UN staff members Anthony Nyero and James Lual.441 However, this number is misleadingly low. Former detainees to whom the Commission spoke reported being uncertain as to the fate of fellow detainees transferred between locations without explanation, never to be seen or heard from again. Additionally, the fate of detainees who died or were killed and then buried in unmarked mass graves, including behind the Bilpham military headquarters and Gorum detention facility, or thrown in the Nile river, remains unresolved for their families. The Commission was told about how families not knowing whether their loved ones are alive continue to try to cope with their disappearances. A number of detainee’s families have held a funeral for them, thinking them dead only for them to be released years later. 438 Witness 1070, ERN 102270-102274. Code of Criminal Procedure Act (2008), section 96(1). 440 Witness 910, ERN 102126-102140. 441 Amnesty International, “South Sudan: Fate of two detained UNMISS staff unknown: Anthony Nyero and James Lual”, 14 December 2016. 439 68