A/HRC/4/40 page 26 69. Moreover, the Working Group frequently finds detainees in pretrial detention, who have been accused of no serious offence. They are kept in custody only to ensure that they will appear before the judge. Therefore, these individuals are not detained because of the real danger that they could represent to the society but because States are simply not capable of guaranteeing that they will appear in court. 70. The increase in the number of detained persons, as well as in the number of proceedings pending before the courts, also has a negative effect on the administration of justice and its operators. The judiciary often lacks financial and technical resources, which frequently leads to ineffective administration of justice and to insufficient control of cases. For instance, in many lawsuits, the Working Group noted that the detainees had never been directly questioned by the judge in charge of their cases. Like the judges, defence lawyers are also swamped and are confronting a serious increase in their workload. Many have neither the technical nor the financial and management resources to prepare their cases adequately and exercise their defence in adequate conditions. 71. The Working Group wishes to point out that the systems of legal aid, i.e. public defence lawyers and lawyers appointed and paid by States in order to ensure a basic defence to the accused (depending on the legal aid system of the country), do not work satisfactorily everywhere. 72. Consequently, the guarantees established by article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, are not being appropriately fulfilled in several States. These guarantees include the right to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of one’s defence and to communicate with counsel of one’s own choosing; the right to be heard by a competent, independent and impartial judge and the right to interrogate witnesses during the trial. V. CONCLUSIONS 73. The Working Group welcomes the cooperation it has received from States in the fulfilment of its mandate. In the great majority of cases in which the Group adopted an Opinion during its three sessions in 2006, the Government concerned had provided submissions regarding the case. 74. The Working Group welcomes the cooperation on the part of Governments that extended invitations to the Group for visits. Thanks to this cooperation, in 2006 the Working Group was able to visit Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Turkey. During its forty-seventh session, the Working Group made a revision of the list of countries it had requested to visit on official mission. It decided to persist in its requests to receive invitations to visit Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Italy, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Turkmenistan and the United States of America, and to receive specific timing proposals for its visits to Colombia, Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone. 75. In a new Legal Opinion, the Working Group concludes that the transfer of detainees without procedural safeguards is in conflict with international law. Governments should stop all forms of rendition and return to the legal proceedings of extradition, deportation and expulsion.