under indefinitely renewable administrative detention orders, while Jordanian authorities continued to hold thousands under a 1954 law allowing detention without charge or trial for up to one year. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife, particularly in Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the UAE. Common torture methods included beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, stress positions, prolonged suspension by the wrists or ankles and threats against detainees and their loved ones. There were new reports of torture in Tunisia although a new Code of Criminal Procedures improved safeguards for detainees (other than terrorism suspects) and a national preventive body created in 2013 slowly began to take shape. A continuing lack of judicial independence together with the “confession culture” that permeated so many national justice systems saw courts often act as mere tools of government repression rather than independent arbiters of justice upholding international fair trial standards. Courts in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the UAE repeatedly failed to conduct fair trials, particularly in cases where defendants faced national security or terrorism-related charges, including in death penalty cases. In Bahrain, the authorities used the courts to obtain orders revoking the nationality of a critical religious cleric and of scores of defendants convicted of terrorism charges, leading to the expulsion of some and rendering many stateless. Courts in Saudi Arabia continued to impose cruel punishments that included floggings of hundreds of lashes, and courts in Iran sentenced defendants to flogging, amputation of their fingers and toes and blinding. REFUGEES, INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE AND MIGRANTS Across the region, millions of people were on the move seeking to escape armed conflicts or other violence, political repression or 52 economic degradation. They included refugees and asylum-seekers, people displaced within their own country, and migrants from the region and beyond. Many were children; some were unaccompanied and especially vulnerable to human trafficking and sexual and other exploitation and abuse. The Syrian and other armed conflicts continued to severely impact other states in the region and beyond. Lebanon hosted more than 1 million refugees from Syria and Jordan hosted more than 650,000, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. These main host countries struggled to meet the additional economic, social and other needs that the arrival of so many refugees presented, amid faltering international humanitarian aid and deeply inadequate refugee resettlement provision by European and other states. The principal host states imposed tighter border controls to prevent new arrivals, consigning thousands of people who sought to flee the conflict to precarious conditions on the Syrian side of the border. Lebanese authorities forcibly returned some asylum-seekers to Syria and Turkish authorities carried out mass forced returns and unlawful push-backs of people seeking refuge. Despite international expressions of concern, countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council accepted few refugees from the region’s armed conflicts; some provided financial support for international humanitarian assistance. In host countries, refugees and asylumseekers frequently lived in insecure and impoverished conditions, were denied employment and faced arrest for not possessing valid documents. In Libya, foreign nationals who entered or remained in the country irregularly, including asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as migrants mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, faced severe repression. Thousands were seized at checkpoints and in raids and incarcerated indefinitely in abusive conditions in both government-run and militia-controlled detention facilities. Others faced abduction for ransom, exploitation and sexual violence by human traffickers and Amnesty International Report 2016/17