34 SAADI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT - JOINT PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGES ROZAKIS, TULKENS, KOVLER, HAJIYEV, SPIELMANN AND HIRVELÄ Judges Casadevall, Traja and Šikuta rightly observed in their dissenting opinion annexed to the Chamber judgment of 11 July 2006, such a situation creates great legal uncertainty for asylum seekers, stemming from the fact that they could be detained at any time during examination of their application without their being able to take the necessary action to avoid detention. Hence, the asylum seeker becomes an object rather than a subject of law. Lastly, following the same line of thinking, the Court accepts in the instant case that a seven-day period of detention “cannot be said to have exceeded that reasonably required for the purpose pursued” (see paragraph 79). In so doing, it is accepting a period of detention which it does not generally sanction in the other cases of deprivation of liberty contemplated by Article 5 of the Convention. Granted, it is understandable that in certain situations, for example concerning extradition, the State must be allowed greater latitude than in the case of other interferences with the right to liberty. However, we can see no justification for adopting such an approach in relation to asylum seekers, with the attendant risk that the scrutiny of deprivations of liberty under the European Convention on Human Rights will be substantially weakened as a result. Moreover, if a seven-day period of detention is not considered excessive, where and how do we draw the line for what is unacceptable? As regards detention generally, the requirements of necessity and proportionality oblige the State to furnish relevant and sufficient grounds for the measure taken and to consider other less coercive measures, and also to give reasons why those measures are deemed insufficient to safeguard the private or public interests underlying the deprivation of liberty. Mere administrative expediency or convenience will not suffice. We fail to see what value or higher interest can justify the notion that these fundamental guarantees of individual liberty in a State governed by the rule of law cannot or should not apply to the detention of asylum seekers. Hence, to the extent that these requirements must be encompassed in the notion of arbitrariness, the question of alternatives to detention should have been considered by the majority. They make no mention of it until the closing paragraphs of their reasoning where, paradoxically, they recognise that “the provision of a more efficient system of determining large numbers of asylum claims rendered unnecessary recourse to a broader and more extensive use of detention powers” (see paragraph 80). It is thus clearly acknowledged that an alternative to detention might have existed enabling the problem to be dealt with at source, in other words at the level of the management of asylum applications; this further underscores the fact that detention was the wrong answer to the right question. The European Convention on Human Rights does not apply in a vacuum, but in conjunction with the other international fundamental rights protection instruments. In that regard, with reference to the United Nations, Article 9