A/HRC/13/42* page 98 567 documented cases of enforced disappearance. Four days later, on 25 November, the Senate Standing Committee on the Interior acknowledged that intelligence agencies maintained “countless hidden torture cells” across the country. Amnesty International stated that new cases of enforced disappearance continued to be reported in 2009.377 According to an article published in the newspaper Dawn on 5 November 2009, the Islamabad Inspector General of Police Kaleem Imam, the Interior Secretary Qamar Zaman and the Rawalpindi Regional Police Officer Aslam Tareen had appeared before the Supreme Court and reported that cases of 416 missing persons had been pending before the apex court since September 2006. The newspaper indicated that: Their report said the interior ministry was making hectic efforts to trace the missing persons and 241 people had been traced while 175 were still untraced. It said that complete particulars of missing persons were being collected with the help of Nadra and the lists had been sent to the provinces and law-enforcement agencies to enhance efforts to locate them. A special task force had also been constituted, the report added.378 192. In June 2008, the Asian Human Rights Commission identified 52 illegal detention centres in Pakistan, where, it stated, “missing persons are held for long periods of time in order to force them to confess their involvement in terrorist and sabotage activities.”379 6. Philippines 193. In its response to the request for relevant information from the four experts (see annex I), the Government of the Philippines drew attention to the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Constitution, enacted after the Revolution of 1986 brought an end to the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos.380 The Bill explicitly bans “secret detention places, solitary, incommunicado, or other similar forms of detention”. The Government also pointed out that the Human Security Act of 2007, the recent counter-terrorism legislation, provides for stiffer penalties for those who violate its provisions regarding the arrest, detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. The Government did not provide any information on cases in which these provisions might have been violated. 194. The Committee against Torture noted in its concluding observations on the most recent periodic report submitted by the Philippines under the Convention against Torture, in April 2009, that it was deeply concerned about the de facto practice of detention of suspects by the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in detention centres, safe houses and military camps.381 The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary 378 Available from the website http://beta.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-contentlibrary/dawn/news/pakistan/04-sc-masood-janjua-qs-08. 379 See the Commission’s statement at the address www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2008statements/1574/. 380 Secret detention practices were not uncommon during the Marcos presidency (see para. 83 above). 381 CAT/C/PHL/CO/2, para. 12.