A/HRC/13/42* page 120 security prison in Sana’a. During that time, no one knew his whereabouts and he did not have any access to the outside world, including any access to a doctor, lawyer or ICRC. His family was not able to visit him until two months after his arrest. He was apparently seized because of a call made from his mobile phone by a relative, and was held for another seven months after the initial period of incommunicado detention. He was released on 27 May 2008. In the report on his interview, it was noted that, when he asked on the day of his release why he had been detained, he was simply told that many innocent people were detained, and he could consider himself to be one such person.456 E. Sub-Saharan Africa 251. In sub-Saharan Africa, the experts gathered information about the secret detention of political opponents in the Gambia, the Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe, where anti-terrorist rhetoric has been invoked. The information collected by the experts also shows the widespread use of secret detention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and several long-standing and unresolved cases of secret detention in Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea. 1. Democratic Republic of the Congo 252. In its report of April 2006, the Committee against Torture expressed concern that officials were still depriving people of their liberty arbitrarily, especially in secret places of detention. The Committee took note of the outlawing of unlawful places of detention that were beyond the control of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, such as prison cells run by the security services and the Special Presidential Security Group, where people had been subjected to torture. Nevertheless, it remained concerned that officials of the State party were still depriving people of their liberty arbitrarily, especially in secret places of detention.457 253. The Agence nationale des renseignements (ANR) and the Republican Guard remain widely reported to severely restrict the safeguards to which detainees are entitled under international law, while at the same time barring any independent monitoring (including by the judiciary), so that detention is effectively secret. Detainees are commonly denied the right to be brought before a judge within the 48-hour time period stipulated by the national Constitution, which has led to a proliferation of detainees who are detained solely on the basis of the Procès-verbal de saisie des prévenus, a document issued by the Prosecutor General stipulating that detainees should be informed of their rights and of the charges imputed to them. In relation to ANR facilities, judicial authorities are barred from carrying out inspections, in clear contravention of the laws of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This state of affairs is compounded by the constant refusal by ANR agents to allow the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office access to their facilities in several parts of the country, particularly Kinshasa, South Kivu, Bas-Congo, North Kivu and Oriental Province, despite the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the existence of a directive by President Joseph Kabila dated 5 July 2005 ordering all security forces, intelligence services and judicial authorities to provide 456 Interview with A.S. (annex II, case 20). 457 CAT/C/DRC/CO/1, para. 7.