PUBLICATION

Anti-terrorism and human rights

By Liz Fekete

As the first Guantanamo Bay detainees are released, a briefing paper from the Institute of Race Relations reveals how dangerously far the EU has already gone in undermining domestic legal process and removing human rights - all in the name of the War on Terror.

An IRR briefing paper on Anti-terrorism and human rights, published today, is essential reading for all those concerned to find out more about the international approach to combating terror and how it is influencing EU and British counter-terrorism measures.

It provides a detailed examination of the global system of targeted sanctions, set in motion after the events of September 11, and establishes that the US has come to dominate EU policy on combating terror to the extent that a common EU foreign and security policy has been totally undermined.

In particular:

the EU approach to targeted sanctions mirrors that of the US and not the UN
EU member states, in acquiescing to a US request to ease the law on extradition of terrorist suspects, have expelled foreign nationals to countries that practise the death penalty and torture - in violation of the principle of non-refoulement

Today, not only organisations, but individuals and charities are finding themselves proscribed as terrorist in the UN, the US and the EU. The briefing paper explores a number of cases where individuals and organisations have challenged proscription, including a successful challenge made in Sweden by lawyers for the 'Somali three.

The briefing paper provides:

concrete examples of how EU policies undermine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms;
case studies of 21 individuals facing either extradition or expulsion, (which includes the cases of two asylum seekers who, since they were expelled from Sweden to Egypt, have allegedly suffered torture and cruel and degrading treatment);
case studies of four organisations, four individuals and four Muslim-run charities which have appeared on terrorist lists in the US or the EU or both.

Author Liz Fekete said today, 'What we are seeing in Europe, post-September 11, is the creation of a shadow criminal justice system without the traditional safeguards of such a system. The result protects neither the rights of the accused nor the security of society.'

Anti-terrorism and human rights is issue no. 47 of the IRR European Race Bulletin

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Anti-terrorism and human rights

By Liz Fekete

As the first Guantanamo Bay detainees are released, a briefing paper from the Institute of Race Relations reveals how dangerously far the EU has already gone in undermining domestic legal process and removing human rights - all in the name of the War on Terror.

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