A/HRC/13/42* page 96 special powers to check terrorist and disruptive acts included preventive detention “upon appropriate grounds for believing that a person has to be stopped from doing anything that may cause a terrorist and disruptive act.” Although under the act preventive detention was limited to 90 days, it was extended to up to one year under the ordinance, and lawyers and human rights activists argued that, since detentions could be ordered for a full year without any judicial scrutiny, and because in practice there was no effective civilian control over the issuance of the orders, the free reign of the security personnel to judge who was a “terrorist” was unquestionable.368 185. In June 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal issued a ground-breaking ruling in response to petitions for the writ of habeas corpus in dozens of cases. It ordered the Government to establish a commission of inquiry into disappearances complying with international standards, to enact a law to criminalize enforced disappearances, to prosecute those responsible for past disappearances and to compensate the families of victims.369 186. In February 2008, however, the Special Rapporteur on torture noted that, while the systematic practice of holding political detainees incommunicado ended with the April 2006 ceasefire, in 2007 OHCHR documented several cases of detainees accused of belonging to armed groups being held for short periods in unacknowledged, incommunicado detention, in the worst case for 11 days. 370 5. Pakistan 187. The full extent of secret detention in Pakistan is not yet known. In its report submitted to the Human Rights Council in 2008, the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances referred to allegations that the Supreme Court was investigating some 600 cases of disappearances and that, while some of the cases reportedly concerned terrorism suspects, many involved political opponents of the Government. The Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, publicly stated that it had overwhelming evidence that the intelligence agencies of Pakistan were detaining terror suspects and other opponents. The retroactive application of the Army Act would allegedly allow substantial impunity of those tried for having terror suspects disappear.371 188. The Working Group also took up the cases of Masood Janjua and Faisal Farz, two of those who had disappeared.372 It was a newspaper report about these men that first prompted the Pakistani Supreme Court, in December 2005, to demand answers from the Government about the whereabouts of those who had disappeared. In August 2006, Masood Janjua’s wife, Amina 368 Ibid., paras. 42-48. 369 Follow-up report of the Special Rapporteur on torture (A/HRC/7/3/Add.2), para. 446. 370 Ibid., para. 428. 371 A/HRC/10/9, paras 300-302. 372 Ibid., para. 297.