A/HRC/42/CRP.1 of the coalition.276 On 1 November 2018, the Southern Transitional Council inaugurated the Southern National Assembly, a legislature of 303 representatives across southern Yemen. Since then the Southern Transitional Council, which purports to have also ‘liberated’ Shabwah and Hadramaut, has opened foreign representative offices, and developed a media presence and public profile internationally. 219. In April 2019, the Yemeni Parliament met for the first time since March 2015 in Seiyoun, Hadramaut. In July 2019, the United Arab Emirates announced the withdrawal of most of its own forces from fronts with the Houthis, but restated its intention to keep a continued presence in Aden and southern Governorates, and its support for Security Belt, Shabwah Elite and Hadrami forces. 2. Detention-related violations: Arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment 220. In its 2018 report, the Group of Experts found reasonable grounds to believe that between 2016 and May 2018, the United Arab Emirates, Security Belt and Shabwah Elite operated a network of unofficial detention facilities, including facilities known as ‘Bir Ahmed I’, ‘Bir Ahmed II’,277 facilities at al-Bureiqa coalition base and the coalition alRayyan Airbase in Hadramaut governorate. The Group further found that within these facilities arbitrary detention and torture including sexual violence occurred. 221. In 2018-2019, the Group documented the continuation of patterns of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence at the same facilities, and further expanded its investigations to examine other facilities in the interconnected system of detention in which these facilities exist. The Group found that the secret detention facility at al-Bureiqa coalition base (hereinafter “al-Bureiqa”) and the Bir Ahmed II detention facility (hereinafter “Bir Ahmed II”) operate as hubs, to which detainees are transferred from satellite sites for longer-term detention. In the case of al-Bureiqa, the Group further found that it was used for interrogation, torture and sexual violence. Bir 276 Ibid. Bir Ahmed I was decommissioned and replaced by Bir Ahmed II in November 2017, and all prisoners were transferred there. In the past this facility has been has been referred to by the Government and the prison authorities as both Bir Ahmed II and as Bir Ahmed, Mansoura Block B, in reference to the Central Prison some distance away in Mansoura. The Group observed as below that Bir Ahmed II falls outside the authority of the Government and the criminal justice system, and thus for consistency it will be referred to as Bir Ahmed II. 277 52