Illegal detentions and the EU counter-terrorism strategy

In this new working document by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), author Florian Geyer says that recent investigations have shed light on the illegal practice of extraordinary renditions and unlawful detentions by foreign security services on European territory.

This paper addresses the issue of how member states have taken advantage of extraordinary renditions and unlawful detentions and, Geyer argues, how they still profit from such practice. Recent examples of this kind of ‘profiteering’ are provided together with an assessment of their legality. 

The second part of the paper addresses the issue from an EU-level perspective and evaluates implications of and for EU counter-terrorism policies, in particular the question of how these policies might become ‘tainted’ by questionable counter-terrorism behaviour of member states and which possibilities might exist to prevent or at least ease such entanglement.

“Many indications suggest that European services have – in some way or other – been entangled,” says Geyer. “The line between co-operation and complicity might too often have become blurred.”