Planned terror measures draw fire

By David Cronin

Date: 08/12/05

EU leaders will next week commit themselves to introducing laws across the Union against the incitement to terrorism.

A counter-terrorism strategy to be approved at next week's Brussels summit (15-16 December) says that it is necessary to have a "legal framework" on incitement to disrupt the activities of terrorist networks. The strategy has been drawn up by the UK's presidency of the EU, in conjunction with Gijs de Vries, the Union's anti-terrorism co-ordinator.

Civil liberties campaigners are perturbed by a proposal in a related document on combating the 'radicalisation and recruitment' of young Muslims. Also prepared by the British presidency, it says that there must be laws against both "inciting and legitimising violence".

Campaigners feel that 'legitimising' is too broad a concept. Criminalising it could lead to the prosecution of political commentators who say they understand the sense of frustration that leads some Palestinians to become suicide bombers, the campaigners argue.

Similar criticisms have been raised about a domestic British anti-terrorism bill. Written in response to the 7 July London bombings, that bill is being considered by the House of Lords this week. Although the original bill recommended that the 'glorification' of terrorism should be outlawed, this was modified following protests. The revised bill would nonetheless still make 'encouraging' terrorism a crime.

Eric Metcalfe from the UK organisation Justice said that creating such offences flouted the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that any restrictions on freedom of expression must be proportionate in nature. "We would be uncomfortable with the idea that the discussion of political ideas could be neutered," he added.

UK Liberal Democrat MEP Sajjad Karim expressed concern that Tony Blair's government could use the EU strategy as a pretext for proposing to outlaw 'glorification' at a later stage. "Charles Clarke [the home secretary] is trying to push through things here that he would never get through at national level," he added.

Clarke, however, defended the UK presidency's proposals on tackling radicalisation earlier this week (5 December). Speaking in London, he said that it was especially necessary to address how the internet was being used by extremist organisations to find new recruits. He also said: "What is most important in all this is to work with the mainstream Muslim community to isolate extremism and that is exactly what we are seeking to do."

The strategy contains a pledge to agree legislation on airline passenger data by the end of 2006. This follows last month's opinion by Phillipe Léger, an advocate-general of the European Court of Justice, that an EU decision on handing over such data to the US should be cancelled because it had been taken under an inappropriate legal base.

Other plans include biometric indicators on EU passports, encouraging Muslim communities "not to rely on external Imams" and "developing a non-emotive lexicon" for discussing Islamic extremism.

Preview of the December 2005 European Council in Brussels, where Heads of State and Government were to discuss the introduction of laws across the European Union against the incitement to terrorism.