A/HRC/13/42* page 116 secretly detained ever since, and has been neither able to consult a lawyer, nor been presented to any judicial authority, nor been charged by the Government with any offence.444 237. On 13 October 2009, the experts conducted an interview with Aissa Hamoudi, an Algerian/Swiss national, who was held incommunicado for three months in a prison in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya without knowing where he was detained. On 18 November 2007, while on a business trip to the country, Mr. Hamoudi was arrested in Tripoli by policemen conducting a simple identity check. After a day spent in police custody, he was handed over to the interior services, who took him to a prison where he was held for three months in a cell with four other men, and interrogated every week, or every other week, on numerous topics. He was asked detailed information about his family, and general questions on his political views, his relationship to Switzerland and other countries. In the last month of his detention, he was left in a cell without a bathroom or water, and had to ask permission for anything he required. In this period, he was not interrogated, but was beaten once when he tried to go on a hunger strike. He was then transferred to the “passports prison”, run by the Exterior Services, which housed around 4,000 detainees, mainly foreigners, waiting to be sent back to their respective countries, where he was held for 10 days in terrible sanitary conditions, but was never interrogated. He witnessed other detainees being tortured, but was not tortured himself. It was here that a representative of the Consulate of Algeria found him, and took steps to initiate his release. He was never charged with anything, and for his entire stay under arrest he was held totally incommunicado. His family did not know where he was, and although he was kept in known places, he was secretly detained.445 7. Saudi Arabia 238. Saudi Arabia has a legal limit of six months of detention before trial, but in reality the domestic intelligence agency - the General Directorate for Investigations, or Mahabith, run by the Ministry of the Interior - functions without effective judicial oversight, running its own prisons, which are used to hold both political prisoners and those regarded as being involved in terrorism, and ignoring court orders to release detainees held for longer than the legal limit. In July 2007, the Minister for the Interior admitted that 9,000 “security suspects” had been detained between 2003 and 2007, and that 3,106 of them were still being held.446 239. In recent years, United Nations bodies have focused on several cases in Saudi Arabia, including the ones set out below. 240. In 2007, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reported that nine individuals - Saud Mukhtar al-Hashimi, Sulaiman al-Rashoudi, Essam Basrawy, Abdulrahman al-Shumairi, 444 Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, opinion No. 16/2007 (A/HRC/10/21/Add.1). 445 Interview with Aissa Hamoudi (annex II, case 11). 446 Amnesty International, “Saudi Arabia, assaulting human rights in the name of counterterrorism”, available from www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE23/009/2009/en/692d9e42b009-462a-8a16-7336ea4dfc3c/mde230092009en.pdf.