Liberty – the price of war against terror

By Dick Leonard

Date: 30/06/05

The EU responded with commendable - if unusual - alacrity to the worldwide terrorist threat unleashed on 11 September 2001. Within five weeks, it had agreed on a wide range of measures, including notably the introduction of a European arrest warrant, designed to beef up counter-terrorism on a Europe-wide basis, without infringing the human rights commitments supposedly assured within its "area of freedom, security and justice".

Now, nearly four years later, Amnesty International has produced a disturbing report questioning how far this objective has been met. Entitled Human rights dissolving at the borders? Counter-terrorism and EU criminal law, it addresses three fundamental issues, as well as listing a whole series of detailed shortcomings.

The first fundamental error, the report suggests, is the failure to agree on a precise definition of terrorism as a basis for framing EU law. It cites with approval the following wordage proposed by a high-level United Nations panel: "any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act."

By contrast, the EU framework decision on combating terrorism, adopted in December 2001, is a lengthy and verbose document, greatly extending the notion of terrorism beyond actual violent acts designed to cause death or serious bodily harm or attempts at such acts. The consequence has been the adoption in several member states of vaguely worded laws, opening the possibility that they may be used against non-violent dissenters as well as those who offer a serious threat to security.

A second issue is the lack of judicial review. Many of the counter-terrorism measures adopted by the EU are categorised in such a way that precludes any role for the European Court of Justice. One consequence has been that individuals or groups who have been included on blacklists of terrorist organisations have virtually no redress if they wish to challenge the validity of their inclusion.

Yet perhaps the most serious issue raised by the report concerns dealings with third countries. Not all member states, it asserts, have been diligent in ensuring that extradition requests are only granted when the human rights of suspects are fully protected, in particular that there are credible guarantees that they will not be subjected to the death penalty, torture or other ill-treatment and will be assured a fair trial.

The Austrian government is criticised for permitting the extradition of 'Ahmed A', a Russian citizen, whose appeal for asylum was still pending. He had claimed that he would face persecution if sent back to Russia because of his ethnic origin and religion and his work for the Dagestan militia. The Russian prosecutor had given assurances that his human rights would be respected, but it has since been claimed that he was tortured in prison in Dagestan on his return, where he is still incarcerated.

Another case, from Sweden, concerned two Egyptians, Muhammad El-Zari and Ahmed Kamil Agiza, who were forcibly deported from Sweden without being given the opportunity of challenging the decision in court. Despite assurances from the Egyptian government, they were held incommunicado for a month and the Swedish ambassador, who was subsequently able to visit them and their families, was told that Agiza had been tortured.

These were perhaps isolated incidents. The report notes other cases, such as that of Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy of the late Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, whose extradition to Russia was refused both by the Danish ministry of justice and by a court in Britain, on the grounds that if extradited, he risked being subjected to torture or ill-treatment or an unfair trial.

Despite the decision on Zakayev, the UK government comes out of the Amnesty report badly. So too does Spain, which is criticised, among other things, for its practice of holding suspects incommunicado for up to 13 days after their arrest.

Amnesty concludes its report with ten specific recommendations to member states and the Commission, to revise current practices and to "exclude the possibility of counter-terrorism legislation being used to quash legitimate protest and dissent which is necessary in a society based on human rights and the rule of law such as the EU purports to be".

"It is in the breach, not in the respect for, human rights that security is threatened," it proclaims.

It is surely time for a comprehensive review of counter-terrorism legislation to be conducted, both on an EU-wide and a national basis.

The proper body to conduct this review would be the European Commission, whose job it is to propose new legislation in most (but not all) of the fields covered by the issue. If not the Commission, the task could perhaps be entrusted to the new EU Agency for Human Rights when that is set up.

• Dick Leonard is a former assistant editor of The Economist.

Amnesty International published a report questioning how far the objective has been met by the European Union of stepping up counter-terrorism on a Europe-wide basis, without infringing human rights commitments. Entitled 'Human rights dissolving at the borders? Counter-terrorism and EU criminal law', it addresses three fundamental issues, as well as listing a whole series of detailed shortcomings.

Amnesty International: Human rights dissolving at the borders? Counter-terrorism and EU criminal law, IOR 61/012/2005 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGIOR610122005?open&of=ENG-312

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