A/HRC/21/50 II. Legal conclusions 15. The commission considers that Syria‘s domestic legislation fails to meet the country‘s obligations under Article 9 of the ICCPR to ensure that those arrested and detained on criminal charges appear ―promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power‖. 16. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Government forces and Shabbiha have continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain individuals during this reporting period. Particular concerns are the holding of individuals without charge; the failure to provide detainees with legal counsel or family visits and the absence in the vast majority of cases reported of any form of judicial review of the detentions. 17. With respect to the crime of enforced disappearance, the families of those arrested were not informed, at the time of arrest or at any point thereafter, of the places of detention of their relatives. With the exception of one detainee, no other detainees interviewed had been afforded family visits. 18. The majority of the families of those detained have not, according to their testimonies, made attempts to obtain information about their relatives‘ places of detention. The reasons for this are said to be twofold: fear that contact with the Government, including at the time of the arrest, would prompt further arrests; and the fact that, in some instances, on-going hostilities made going to official detention centres difficult, if not impossible. 19. Where the Government has refused to acknowledge the arrest and detention or to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person concerned, the commission finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the crime of enforced disappearance has occurred. 85