Counterterrorism and Investigative Detention explores the practice of investigative detention of terrorist suspects in the legal systems of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. In addition to illuminating the characteristics, capabilities, and limitations of various investigative detention regimes, this book examines ways in which international law and national security imperatives have served as vectors for change and convergence in these otherwise divergent legal systems.

In a regional, national and global response to terrorism, the emphasis necessarily lies on preventing the next terrorist act. Yet, with prevention comes prediction: the need to identify and detain those considered likely to engage in a terrorist act in the future. The detention of ‘suspected terrorists’ is intended, therefore, to thwart a potential terrorist act recognising that retrospective action is of no consequence given the severity of terrorist crime. Although preventative steps against those reasonably suspected to have an intention to commit a terrorist act is sound counter-terrorism policy, a law allowing arbitrary arrest and detention is not. A State must carefully enact anti-terrorism laws to ensure that preventative detention does not wrongly accuse and grossly slander an innocent person, nor allow a terrorist to evade detection. This book examines whether the preventative detention of suspected terrorists in State counter-terrorism policy is consistent with the prohibitions on arbitrary arrest and detention in international human rights law. This examination is based on the ‘principle of proportionality’; a principle underlying the prohibition on arbitrary arrest as universally protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and given effect to internationally in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and regionally in regional instruments including the European Convention on Human Rights. The book is written from a global counter-terrorism perspective, drawing particularly on examples of preventative detention from the UK, US and Australia, as well as jurisprudence from the ECHR.

In 2006, the United Nations urged Member States to ensure that counter terrorism policies guaranteed respect for human rights and the rule of law. This book demonstrates that, in many cases, counter terrorism policies relating to preventive detention, targeted killing and measures relating to returning foreign terrorist fighters have failed to respect human rights, and this encourages vulnerable people to be drawn towards supporting or committing acts of terrorism. Furthermore, in recent years, jurisprudence and public opinion in some countries have shifted from being at one stage more protective of human rights, to an acquiescence that some particularly draconian counter terrorism methods are necessary and acceptable. This book analyzes why this has happened, with a focus on the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel, and offers suggestions to address this issue. The work will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of human rights, humanitarian law, and counter terrorism.

This book examines the existing counter-terrorism laws and practices in the six-member East African Community (EAC) as it applies to a range of law enforcement and military activities under various international legal obligations. Dr. Christopher E. Bailey provides a comparative examination of existing national law for EAC countries, including compliance with obligations under international human rights and international humanitarian law, and offers a range of legal reform recommendations. This book addresses two primary, related research questions: To what extent do the current national counter-terrorism laws and practices of the EAC Partner States comply with existing international human rights safeguards? What laws or practices can the EAC adopt to achieve better compliance with human rights safeguards in both civilian and military counter-terrorism operations?

Preventive detention as a counter-terrorism tool is fraught with conceptual and procedural problems and risks of misuse, excess and abuse. Many have debated the inadequacies of the current legal frameworks for detention, and the need for finding the most appropriate legal model to govern detention of terror suspects that might serve as a global paradigm. This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the detention of terror suspects under domestic criminal law, the law of armed conflict and international human rights law. The book looks comparatively at the law in a number of key jurisdictions including the USA, the UK, Israel, France, India, Australia and Canada and in turn compares this to preventive detention under the law of armed conflict and various human rights treaties. The book demonstrates that the procedures governing the use of preventive detention are deficient in each framework and that these deficiencies often have an adverse and serious impact on the human rights of detainees, thereby delegitimizing the use of preventive detention. Based on her investigation Diane Webber puts forward a new approach to preventive detention, setting out ten key minimum criteria drawn from international human rights principles and best practices from domestic laws. The minimum criteria are designed to cure the current flaws and deficiencies and provide a base line of guidance for the many countries that choose to use preventive detention, in a way that both respects human rights and maintains security.

This book critically and comparatively examines the responses of the United Nations and a range of countries to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. It assesses the convergence between the responses of Western democracies including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada with countries with more experience with terrorism including Egypt, Syria, Israel, Singapore and Indonesia. A number of common themes - the use of criminal law and immigration law, the regulation of speech associated with terrorism, the review of the state's whole of government counter-terrorism activities, and the development of national security policies - are discussed. The book provides a critical take on how the United Nations promoted terrorism financing laws and listing processes and the regulation of speech associated with terrorism but failed to agree on a definition of terrorism or the importance of respecting human rights while combating terrorism.

This book critically examines Australia’s counter terrorism measures by looking at the country’s legislative framework within the context of an international law framework and norms relating to human rights. It discusses the Australian governments justifications for the war on terrorism and sociological theories relating to ‘risk society’ as a way to explain Australia’s counter terrorism policies and the impact of the war on terror on social cohesion in Australia. It looks at the adverse impacts of the war on terror on Muslims in Australia and their sense of belonging in a multicultural society and analyses these developments from a sociological perspective. The book also explores the recent shift in the Australian governments’ approach to countering terrorism, a shift from a coercive approach to tackling terrorism to a community engagement approach focused on building relationships and trust with Australia’s diverse communities, particularly the Muslim community.

Particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, the threat of terrorism, however, defined, has been invoked as a common ‘justification’ in the pursuit of remodelling policies, laws, and institutions, both at the international and in the domestic politico-legal showground. The broader central theme that this book explores is the normative vibe under which the present-day counterterrorism discourse is construed and sculpted in the legislative and institutional structures of an authoritarian state where the political power and government institutions are functioning under a single-party-monopolised system. Presenting the Ethiopian legislative and institutional frameworks as a case study, the book critically reflects on the extent that the international legal and/or institutional counterterrorism response is sensitised in a manner lessening the risk of conflating authoritarian regime’s unbearable reactions to citizens’ legitimate demands and resistances against its repression vis-àvis that of its response to the common threat of international terrorism. In particular, the book ponders whether or not the range of the substantive and procedural aspects of the Ethiopian antiterrorism legislative and institutional frameworks are wrought to fit into the main objectives and standards that emanate from the pertinent international laws relating to terrorism and the international human rights law as well as the domestic constitutional law maxims.