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92. As the Court has remarked in the case of X_v_the_United Kingdom the word "court" in Art. 5(4) does not necessarily connote a court of law of the classic kind, integrated within the standard and judicial machinery of the country (ibid. p. 23 at para. 53).
term "court" serves to denote "bodies which exhibit not only common fundamental features, of which the most important is independence of the executive and of the parties to the case ..., but also the guarantees" - "appropriate to the kind of deprivation of liberty in question" - "of a judicial procedure", the forms of which may vary from one domain to another (Vagrancy Case, loc. cit., pp. 41-42, paras. 76 and 78).
93. In addition, the existence of the "court" remedy must be sufficiently certain, failing which it will lack the accessibility and effectiveness which are required by Art. 5(4) (Van Droogenbroeck case, loc. cit., p. 30, para. 54).
94.
Application for habeas corpus
The Government point out that it would have been open to the applicant, on his recall, to apply for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the lawfulness of his detention. Under principles of common law, the detention will not be lawful if the Secretary of State has failed to comply with any statutory requirement or has acted in bad faith or capriciously, or for a wrongful purpose, or if the decision is supported by no evidence or is one which no reasonable person or authority could have reached in the circumstances (see the decisions cited at para. 43 above).
95. The applicant, however, refers to the case of Re Featherstone [1953] 37 Cr. App. Rep. 146 D.C. where it was held that courts cannot grant writs of habeas corpus to persons who are serving sentences passed by courts of competent jurisdiction (see para. 54).
96. The Commission considers that if such a remedy were open to the applicant it could not be excluded that the scope of review satisfies Art. 5(4) in respect of the Home Secretary's decision to re-detain the applicant in June 1977 although doubts may be expressed as to whether the scope of review is sufficiently wide to satisfy Art. 5(4) in respect of the applicant's continued detention (see mutatis mutandis, X v. the United Kingdom, loc. cit., p. 25 at para. 58).
97.
The Commission, however, considers that the case of Re Featherstone indicates, in explicit terms, that the remedy of habeas corpus is not available to a person like the applicant who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment imposed by a competent court. Moreover, it notes that the Government was not able to refer to any cases where a convicted prisoner successfully sought habeas corpus