A/HRC/13/42* page 29 were intended to have a deterrent effect, because detainees would vanish without leaving a trace and no information would be given as to their whereabouts or fate.70 58. An incipient form of these practices was, however, already well known in the former Soviet Union, with its Gulag71 system of forced-labour camps, first established under Vladimir Lenin during the early Bolshevik years. The Gulag system ultimately resulted in a vast penal network, including hundreds of camp complexes, which functioned throughout the State, many in Siberia and the Soviet Far East. The system was enhanced after 1928 under Joseph Stalin. 59. Even though the above-mentioned practices were encompassed in a broader context of war or perpetuation of a state of terror, secret detention in the context of counter-terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Striking similarities can be identified between security measures in the 1970s and 1980s in the context of Latin America, but also other regions, such as northern Africa and South-East Asia, on the one hand, and the counter-terrorism measures adopted worldwide since 11 September 2001, on the other. The methods used then, as now, consisted of, inter alia, broad emergency laws, the enhanced role of military and special courts, the practice of torture and/or ill-treatment, kidnappings (renditions), enforced disappearances and notably secret detention. B. The recent practice of secret detention 1. Secret detention in Latin America 60. Secret detention in Latin America was closely linked to the widespread pattern of enforced disappearances. On the basis of the reports produced by various national truth and reconciliation commissions, in the 1970s and 1980s, patterns of secret detention were identified in, inter alia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.72 Thousands of Latin Americans were secretly kidnapped, tortured and killed by national security services. When these dictatorial regimes came to an end, some of the countries, on the basis of their archives, decided to prosecute former Government officials, as well as police and military officers. In other countries these attempts have long been hampered by impunity created as a result of, inter alia, amnesty laws or pardons. 70 Whilhelm Gorlitz (ed.), The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel, W. Kimber, London, 1965, pp. 254-6. 71 72 Russian acronym for “Main Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps”. See, inter alia, Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), “Nunca Más” (“Never Again”), Buenos Aires, 1984; (Brasil Nunca Mais) (1985) (the report documented 125 cases of enforced disappearances carried out for political reasons by the military regimes between 1964 and 1979); Comité de Iglesias para Ayudas de Emergencias (the final report was released in May 1990 and documented more than 360,000 illegal arrests and at least 200 disappearances during the dictatorship of General Stroessner); final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php; Informe Final de La Comisión Para La Paz, 10 April 2003 (Uruguay), available at the address www.usip.org/files/file/resources/collections/commissions/Uruguay-Report_Informal.pdf.