A/HRC/28/32 or attacks against a democratic regime; and military tribunals should never be competent to impose the death penalty. 28. The Working Group had found that justice by military courts often fell into the five categories of arbitrariness identified in its methods of work: military forces often stop and detain persons for a long time, and military judges often order continuing detention in the absence of any legal basis; many detainees brought before military courts have been detained simply for exercising a fundamental freedom, such as the freedom of opinion and expression, association, assembly or religion; military judges and prosecutors often do not meet the fundamental requirements of independence and impartiality; procedures applied by military courts often do not respect the basic guarantees for a fair trial; and individuals brought before military courts are often foreign nationals, including migrants in an irregular situation, asylum seekers and refugees captured by military forces at borders, at sea and in airports. 29. Ronald Naluwairo, Senior Lecturer at the School of Law of Makerere University in Uganda pointed out that the Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance in Africa, adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in May 2003, addressed military courts. According to section L of the Principles and Guidelines, the only purpose of military courts was to determine offences of a purely military nature committed by military personnel; military courts were required to respect the fair trial standards specified in the African Charter and in other parts of the Principles and Guidelines; and military courts should not have jurisdiction over civilians. 30. Mr. Naluwairo discussed military justice in Uganda. Section 119 of the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Force Act, 2005 gave wide jurisdiction over many categories of civilians. These categories included civilians who served in the position of an officer or militant in any force raised and maintained outside Uganda and commanded by an officer of the Uganda Defence Forces; civilians who voluntarily accompanied any unit or other element of the defence forces on service; civilians who served in the defence forces under engagements by which they agreed to be subject to military law; civilians who aided or abetted a person subject to military law in commission of a service offence; civilians found in unlawful possession of arms, ammunition or equipment ordinarily being the monopoly of the defence forces; and persons not subject to military law who had committed offences while subject to military law. 31. Mr. Naluwairo noted that, in its concluding observations on the third periodic report of Uganda, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights had recommended that the State introduce legal measures that prohibited the trial of civilians by military courts. He added that the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Force Act, 2005 did not provide adequate safeguards to guarantee the independence and impartiality of military courts; judge advocates, prosecutors and members of the military courts were all appointed by the same authority and serving military personnel. Mr. Naluwairo stated that there were no known objective criteria for appointing, re-appointing, suspending or dismissing judge advocates and members of the military courts; the law was silent on the security of tenure of judge advocates, although, in practice, they were appointed to serve for a period of one year and were eligible for re-appointment. He added that in Uganda Law Society and Jackson Karugaba v. Attorney General, the Constitutional Court held that “it is not possible for Uganda’s military courts to be independent and impartial given the current laws under which they are constituted and the military structure within which they operate.” 32. With regard to the right to a public hearing, Mr. Naluwairo stated that the trials conducted by the Division Courts Martial in barracks were difficult for members of the public to attend. In addition, members of the public had been increasingly excluded from attending hearings of General Courts Martial or at the Court Martial Appeals Court on grounds of national security. 8