maximum time foreseen by the law (6 months of the arrest). Where this does not occur, the defendants were released immediately. b) Establishing adequate grounds for deprivation of personal liberty Article 120 of the CPC states that the Court can impose detention “after hearing the statements of the representative of the Public Prosecution and the defendant”, in compliance with the principle of equality of arms. However, ISTIQLAL also observed a concerning general tendency of Courts to impose detention relying exclusively on Prosecution arguments. As a first indicator of this tendency to lean in favour of the Prosecution’s requests, ISTIQLAL noted that in the vast majority of monitored cases Prosecutors did not submit the case file to the court when they requested the detention of the defendant. The Court did not request the Prosecution to supplement its oral pleadings with the case file, and it did not review the investigative materials contained therein. As shown in Chart 18, such instances were observed on average in 27% of all First Instance Courts cases, especially in the West Bank, where as many as 31.5% of Serious Crimes Court branches on average performed slightly better, with case files submitted to the Court in over 43% of cases. Chart 18 - Cases where court reviewed Prosecution file prior to imposing detention (% of cases) 100% 90% 80% 70% Court did not review the file 60% 50% Court reviewed the file 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Serious Crimes Court First Instance Courts West Bank First Instance Courts Gaza Second, ISTIQLAL observed that Prosecutors sometimes relied in their submissions on recommendations by security agencies, claiming dangerousness of the accused, without substantiating these allegations with evidence that the Court could assess. It is concerning is that also in these cases courts often imposed pre-trial detention: defendants were therefore 41