A/HRC/4/40 page 18 35. Opinion No. 29/2006 concerns 26 men held, some of them for five years by now, by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at secret detention facilities around the world for the purpose of interrogation. They were arrested by the authorities (generally the intelligence services) of their country of residence, in most cases Pakistan, but also the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Iraq, and handed over to the CIA without any procedure contemplated by law. Allegations were also received regarding the existence of a related system of secretly returning prisoners to their home country when they have outlived their usefulness to the United States. The transfer practice is also known as “rendition” or “extraordinary rendition”. 36. In December 2005 and June 2006 the Chairperson of the Working Group joined the Special Rapporteur on torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers in two urgent appeals to the Government of Kyrgyzstan, asking that it desist from returning five Uzbek refugees to the authorities of Uzbekistan. The Chairperson of the Working Group did so out of concerns that “the Uzbek authorities might not guarantee these persons the right to a fair trial. […] These concerns regard irregularities in the preparation of the trial, inadequate defence procedures, the definition of the crime of terrorism in national law, which might not be compatible with the requirements of articles 6 and 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the excessive reliance of the courts on confessions”. The Government of Kyrgyzstan did not reply to the special procedures’ urgent communication. The five men were returned to Uzbekistan in August 2006. 37. Finally, the joint report on the situation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay (E/CN.4/2006/120) also illustrates the Working Group’s concerns regarding the transfer of terrorism suspects from one jurisdiction to another. The six men of Algerian origin transferred to Guantánamo from Bosnia and Herzegovina (see paragraph 25 of the report) were handed over to United States forces by the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of an order by the highest human rights court of the country.3 Five years later, they are still detained without charges. Five of the Uighurs (see paragraph 28 (e) of the report), who according to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal were not “enemy combatants”, were subsequently transferred from Guantánamo to Albania, where - according to information received in the meantime by the Working Group - they are held at a refugee camp in Tirana, a former prison, enclosed with barbed wire, which they are permitted to leave only for short periods. 38. In all these cases (with the exception of the urgent appeals, which do not imply an opinion of the Working Group on the legality of detention), the Working Group found the detention to be arbitrary. What the Working Group would like to draw attention to here is the responsibility and obligations of the Governments who cooperate in transferring persons to the custody of a State where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of arbitrary detention. 3 For the circumstances of the arrest and transfer of the six men to Guantánamo Bay, see the decision of the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina of 11 October 2002 in case No. CH/02/8679 et al., Boudellaa & Others v. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, available at www.hrc.ba.