Amnesty blasts EU anti-terror 'fear tactics'

Presenting the Annual Report 2007, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan said: "Just as global warming requires global action based on international cooperation, the human rights meltdown can only be tackled through global solidarity and respect for international law." 

"Europe is by no means free of these problems and the EU has no cause for complacency," said Amnesty International's EU Office Director Dick Oosting. 

"Five years after 9/11 Europe still has no proper answer to the challenge of fighting terrorism while respecting rights. The complicity of European states with CIA abductions and illegal extradition amounted to a breakdown of the rule of law in Europe. 

"Almost as bad as allowing these acts to occur in Europe has been European governments' failure to recognize them and to take measures to prevent such abuses from happening again," Oosting added. "Europe betrays its values if it remains trapped in this denial. It has a leadership role to play but in order to set a credible example outside, it first needs to clean up its act at home."

But Eugeniusz Smolar, president of the Center For International Relations in Warsaw is critical of Amnesty International's stance. He told RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty: "I think that Amnesty International, in the past ten years, went the wrong way. It was a global organisation, which took care of human rights violations in every country, under every regime. And it became 'anti-Western' in the past ten years or 15 years. And I saw it coming, because I was co-operating with Amnesty International in the 1980s, when helping with the Czech and Slovak Charter 77 movement or the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland. Now it became much more difficult to show Amnesty International the problems, for instance, in Russia."

A UK Home Office spokesman stressed the UK government's committment to "the strongest possible armoury to protect the public from terrorism". 

He called EurActiv: "The Terrorism Act 2006 increased the maximum period of detention without charge of terrorist suspects from 14 days to 28 days. This increase was necessary primarily as a result of greater use of encrypted computers, the increasingly complex nature of terrorist networks and the increasingly international nature of terrorist networks meaning greater language difficulties and greater need to gather evidence from abroad.

"Furthermore, the risk to public safety from current terrorist methodology is such that it is imperative that police are able to arrest or disrupt at the earliest possible stage, or to be confident that sufficient control of the targets exists to enable the police to be satisfied that the risk is eliminated." 

The spokesman for Freedom, Security and Justice Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini did not return call or email requests to comment on Amnesty's report.