"They hate our freedom"

[Al-khiyal]

U.S. "war on terror" eroded rights worldwide: experts

GENEVA, February 16, 2009 (Reuters) - Washington's "war on terror" after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies," the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its "war paradigm."

"There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed," she told a news conference in Geneva. "We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws."

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

"We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less," he told a Geneva briefing to launch an International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) report on counter-terrorism and human rights.

The report found that many undemocratic states have referred to U.S. counter-terrorism practices to justify their own abuses, a trend Robinson said was particularly alarming.

She called on the U.N. Security Council and Human Rights Council to step up their abuse monitoring and to assist poorer nations with police training to better target rights violators.

Counter-terrorism policies worldwide should also be put under the microscope, according to Robinson. "It could warrant a special session of the Human Rights Council," she said.

The 47-member-state body has previously had special sessions on Israel and the Palestinians, Sudan's Darfur region, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and high food prices, and will assess the global financial crisis on Friday.

Robinson also questioned the effectiveness of the Council's universal periodic review, under which every U.N. member has its rights record assessed on a regular rotation.

"We have looked at some of the universal periodic reviews of countries that we know from our hearings have severely abused human rights in their counter-terrorism measures, and it is a soft review, there is no accountability," she said. "There is a necessity now for leadership at the United Nations."

Countries recently reviewed by the Council include China, Russia, Germany, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Hearings for the ICJ report took place in Bogota, Nairobi, Sydney, Belfast, London, Rabat, Washington, Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Moscow, Delhi, Islamabad, Toronto, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Brussels.

[Al-khiyal]

Lawyers condemn UK over torture in 'war on terror'

February 16, 2009 -- The United Kingdom is one of a number of countries that has undermined international law and fallen into a "trap set by terrorists", according to a three-year study by senior international jurists released today.

The report, by the International Commission of Jurists, expresses "deep concern" over the findings of changes to the legal landscape since September 11, 2001, in more than 40 countries including the UK, the U.S., and countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Singling out the UK's use of a wide range of counterterrorism laws, the report highlights allegations of complicity in torture and intelligence sharing, the practice of rendition, and the system of control orders, as areas of particular concern.

"We have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counterterrorism measures," said Justice Arthur Chaskalson, former president of the South African constitutional court, who headed the study.

The report comes as the case of Binyam Mohamed continues to draw attention to the role of the UK intelligence services in questioning detainees alleged to have been tortured in Pakistan and Guantánamo Bay.

"UK security services facilitated in various ways the questioning of Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan and the US detention, while being held incommunicado and subjected to ill-treatment," the report says. "The relationship between the UK government and the US authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing."

The report also comes as former senior law lord, Lord Bingham, writes in tomorrow's Guardian that the UK government has taken "tough repressive measures" including the laws for indefinite detention of foreign nationals without charge, and the failed proposals for 42 days detention without charge. "The government's ill-judged and ill-fated attempts to detain terror suspects ... [were] pills which parliament declined to swallow," Lord Bingham writes.

However, a number of oppressive measures continue to present a threat to the rule of law in the UK, according to the report. The include rendition – the practice of seizing and transferring terrorist suspects – described as a measure which "violates numerous human rights".

"It was clear to the panel that the practice of rendition and extraordinary rendition ... involved a 'spider's web' of cooperative endeavours," the report states. "Many states have allegedly facilitated extraordinary renditions including ... the UK".

The report also points to the system of control orders, developed by the UK and copied by other countries including Canada, and described in damning terms as "missing ... many important safeguards" and raising "concerns about real and perceived discrimination".

"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years," said the former president of Ireland and president of the commission, Mary Robinson. "It is now absolutely essential that all states restore their commitment to human rights ... If we fail to act now, the damage to international law risks becoming permanent."

The Foreign Office denied todaythat the UK had subordinated the rule of law, stating that "while arrest and prosecution remain the primary goals of our counterterrorism policy, we still need to pursue terrorists through all available means, and we work hard to ensure that the tools we deploy are consistent with human rights".

"The UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture," a spokesman added. "We have consistently made clear our absolute opposition to torture and our determination to combat it wherever and whenever it occurs." However, the commission, which visited the UK and met government representatives as part of the study, raises wider questions of the necessity of new counterterrorism laws.

"The legal framework that existed prior to 9/11 is extremely robust and effective," the report says. "The framework of international law is being actively undermined ... creating a dangerous situation wherein terrorism, and the fear of terrorism, are undermining basic principles of international human rights law."

The damning tone of the report is likely to raise further questions about the response of the UK government to terrorism and its cooperation with the Bush government's "war on terror", a concept condemned by the commission as "legally flawed" and setting "a dangerous precedent".

"The erosion of international law principles is being led by some of those liberal democratic states that in the past have loudly proclaimed the importance of human rights," the report warns.

[Al-khiyal]

Ex-spy chief Dame Stella Rimington says ministers have turned UK into police state

February 17, 2009 -- Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting people’s fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights.

Ministers risked handing a victory to terrorists who want people to “live in fear and under a police state”, said the former spy, who retired as Director General of the Security Service in 1996.

Dame Stella, 73, has been a harsh critic of the Government’s policies, including attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and its controversial ID cards plan.

“Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people’s privacy,” said Dame Stella, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

“It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, which is precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.”

Dame Stella said that America was even more to blame and had acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists, through harsh anti-terror measures that have been accused of breaching human rights law.

“The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that," she said.

“Furthermore, it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification.”

A report by a panel of leading judges and lawyers, published yesterday, appeared to confirm Dame Stella's view, warning that measures to tackle terrorism have undermined international human rights laws.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) found that “many states have fallen into a trap set by terrorists”, by introducing anti-terrorism measures which undermined the very values they sought to protect. Many such measures were imposed on a temporary basis but ended up becoming permanent features of law and practice, it said. It condemned the use of torture, disappearances, and arbitrary and secret detention.

Dame Stella's criticism was seized upon by the Conservatives. David Davis, the Tory MP and former shadow home secretary, said: "Like so many of those who have had involvement in the battle against terrorism, Stella Rimington cares deeply about our historic rights and rightly raises the alarm about a Government whose first interest appears to be to use the threat of terrorism to frighten people and undermine those rights rather than defend them."

Brian Eno, the musician turned activist who will speak at the Convention on Modern Liberty later this month, said that Dame Stella was right.: "When the government passed its 'anti-terror' laws, it reassured those who campaigned against them that they would only ever be used in the most extreme circumstances," said Eno.

"Within a couple of years they had been used to eject an 80-year-old heckler from a Labour Party Conference, to arrest a woman for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq, and to freeze the assets of Icelandic banks in England. This is the problem with vague legislation of this type: it invariably gets called into use whenever anybody does anything that the government finds embarrassing or the police find inconvenient."

A Home Office spokesman defended the Government's record, saying: “The Government has been clear that, where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy, they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate."