Judge calls for safeguards to protect detained EU citizens

Date: 11/04/02

By Martin Banks

A SENIOR judge has called for the legal rights of people arrested in foreign countries to be respected in member states.

Françoise Tulkens of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg says that EU citizens who are detained abroad should be able to have documents or statements on their case translated into their mother tongue.

Member states should also respect defendants' rights to have full access to their files, she told a hearing in Brussels last week.

Tulkens also supported calls for an EU-wide standard of legal translation and interpretation.

'This is a central issue when it comes to procedural safeguards for suspects and defendants in criminal proceedings,' Tulkens told the one-day hearing at the European Parliament. Her comments were echoed by another speaker, Stephen Jakobi of the UK-based campaign group, Fair Trials Abroad.

'We have, since the creation of the European community, gained the freedom of European citizens to work and live freely anywhere in the EU,' he said. 'Unfortunately, the potential for mass injustice, due to the neglect of foreigners' legal rights, has correspondingly increased. Over the last ten years, there appears to have been a three-fold rise in the number of EU citizens sitting in foreign EU jails.'

He added: 'To ensure proper rights for foreign defendants, it is necessary for adequate interpretation to be available at all stages of the legal process and for all documents that may be relevant to the trial to be translated.'

The hearing, which was attended by MEPs, lawyers and senior Commission officials, was organised by The Greens/European Free Alliance group.

A senior judge has called for the legal rights of people arrested in foreign countries to be respected in Member States.