Chapter 5 • Human Rights and Arrest, Pre-Trial and Administrative Detention and a half months was considered excessive and constituted a violation of article 5(1). In this latter case, the Court concluded that “the public interest involved” could “not be relied upon as a justification for keeping the applicant, who ... was undergoing psychiatric treatment, in a state of uncertainty for over two and a half months”. The Court emphasized that “the onus for ensuring that a request for the extension of a placement order is made and examined in time must be placed on the competent authorities and not on the person concerned”.76 Article 5(1) was considered violated when the national judge ordering a person’s confinement in a psychiatric hospital under the Dutch Mentally Ill Persons Act failed to hear the person concerned “before authorizing her confinement, although the legal conditions under which such a hearing might be dispensed with were not satisfied”; the judge should at “the very least ... have stated, in his decision, the reasons which led him to depart from the psychiatrist’s opinion in this respect”.77 Article 5(1) was further violated when, contrary to domestic law, no registrar was present at the court hearing following which the applicant was confined in a psychiatric hospital; in other words, the terms “procedure prescribed by law” had not been complied with.78 4.7.3 Deprivation of liberty of asylum seekers and for purposes of deportation and extradition The Human Rights Committee has ruled with regard to article 9(1) that “there is no basis for the ... claim that it is per se arbitrary to detain individuals requesting asylum”, although “every decision to keep a person in detention should be open to review periodically so that the grounds justifying the detention can be assessed”.79 In any event, “detention should not continue beyond the period for which the State can provide appropriate justification. For example, the fact of illegal entry may indicate a need for investigation and there may be other factors particular to the individual, such as the likelihood of absconding and lack of cooperation, which may justify detention for a period. Without such factors detention may be considered arbitrary, even if entry was illegal”.80 In this specific case, since the State party had not advanced grounds to justify the author’s “continued detention for a period of four years”, the Committee concluded that the detention was arbitrary and thus contrary to article 9(1).81 ***** 76 Eur. Court HR, Case of Erkalo v. the Netherlands, judgment of 2 September 1998, Reports 1998-VI, p. 2479, para. 59. 77 Eur. Court HR, Van der Leer Case v. the Netherlands, judgment of 21 February 1990, Series A, No. 170-A, p. 12, para. 23. 78 Eur. Court HR, Wassink Case v. the Netherlands, judgment of 27 September 1990, Series A, No. 185-A, p. 12, para. 27. 79 Communication No. 560/1993, A. v. Australia (Views adopted on 3 April 1997), in UN doc. GAOR, A/52/40 (vol. II), p. 143, paras. 9.3 and 9.4. 80 Ibid., para. 9.4; emphasis added. 81 Ibid., loc. cit. Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers 179