The Commission considers that the same principle applies to the length of detention before trial, and that states parties to the Charter cannot rely on the political situation existing within their territory or a large number of cases pending before the courts to justify excessive delay. 100. Moreover, the detainees are being held incommunicado, and have never been brought before a judge to face charges. In these circumstances, the Commission finds that Eritrea has breached the requirement of trial within a reasonable time set out in Article 7.1.d. This is consonant with its previous 30 decisions, such as communication 102/93 , in which 3 years detention was found to be 31 unacceptable, and communication 103/93 , in which the Commission stated that 7 years detention without trial, “clearly violates the ‘reasonable time’ standard stipulated in the Charter.” 101. The fact that the detainees are being held incommunicado also merits further consideration in terms of international human rights law. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has 32 directed that States should make provisions against incommunicado detention, which can amount to a violation of Article 7 (torture and cruel treatment and punishment) of theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Eritrea has acceded. Furthermore, the [African] Commission itself has stated that, “holding an individual without permitting him or her to have contact with his or her family, and refusing to inform the family if and where the individual is being held, is inhuman treatment 33 of both the detainee and the family concerned.” 102. Eritrea has not denied the Complainant’s contention that the detainees are being held incommunicado, with no access to legal representation or contact with their families, and as the [African] Commission has enunciated in many of its previous decisions, where allegations are not disputed by the State involved, the Commission may take the facts as provided by the Complainant as 34 a given . Nor does the political situation described by Eritrea excuse its actions, as Article 5, permits no restrictions or limitations on the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment. The Commission thus finds that Eritrea has violated Article 5, by holding the journalists and political dissidents incommunicado without allowing them access to their families. 35 103. In keeping with its earlier decisions on similar cases , the Commission also finds that such treatment amounts to a breach of Article 18, as it constitutes violation of the rights of both the detainees and their families to protection of family life. Finally, the Commission holds that there has been a violation of Article 7.1.c, since the detainees have been allowed no access to legal representation, contrary to the right to be defended by counsel which is protected by that provision of the Charter. 104. The [African] Commission turns its attention now to the question of whether there has been a violation of the detainees’ rights to express and disseminate their opinions, as alleged by the Complainant. The events which give rise to this allegation are the ban by the Eritrean government of the private press, and the arrest and detention of the 18 journalists. The Respondent State argues that these actions were justified by the activities of the journalists and the newspapers in question, which it considered were aimed at overthrowing the government. Further, the Eritrean government claims that its actions did not constitute a breach of the Charter, as Article 9 only protects the expression and dissemination of opinions within the law. 105. As explained above, permitting State Parties to construe Charter provisions so that they could be limited or even negated by domestic laws would render the Charter meaningless. Any law enacted by the Eritrean Government which permits a wholesale ban on the press and the imprisonment of those whose views contradict those of the Government’s is contrary to both the spirit and the purpose of Article 9. The Commission reiterates its own statement in communications 105/93, 128/94, 130/94 36 and 152/96: [A]ccording to Article 9.2 of the Charter, dissemination of opinions may be restricted by law. This does not mean that national law can set aside the right to express and disseminate one’s opinions; this would make the protection of the right to express one’s opinions ineffective. To allow national law to have precedence over the international law of the Charter would defeat the purpose of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Charter. International human rights standards must always prevail over contradictory national law. Any limitation on the rights of the Charter must be in conformity with the provisions of the Charter.