17/11/2010 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
“The case-law of the European Court of Human Rights shows that there sometimes exists a temptation to respond to terrorism with a strong-armed approach that gives public security precedence over the respect for human rights,” Lord John E. Tomlinson (United Kingdom, SOC), rapporteur on human rights and the fight against terrorism, said at the opening of a hearing on the subject organised by the Legal Affairs Committee in Paris today. The purpose of his report, he said, was to examine the compatibility of counter-terrorism legislation and its application with Council of Europe standards in the field of human rights.
Participants in the hearing discussed in which way member states may encroach upon the human rights of suspected terrorists or even of journalists or members of the public at large, who suffer restrictions of different kinds in the name of the fight against terrorism.
The rapporteur warned there was a danger that temporary measures, provided for under the European Convention on Human Rights, which allow restrictions or suspensions of specific rigths become permanent even when the circumstances have changed. “It is extremely difficult to reinstate human rights protections once they have been abolished or reduced in scope,” Lord Tomlinson concluded.
Participants tried to determine to if, and to what extent, states can lawfully curtail and prevent terrorism via measures such as surveillance, interception, hearing of anonymous witnesses, the installation and use of closed-circuit television and the monitoring of monetary movements as well as the use of information obtained by secret services as legally admissible evidence, or the resort to data from, for example, ID cards and SWIFT operations.