Academic Articles and opinions worth reading

Jens David Ohlin (Cornell Law School) has posted The Torture Lawyers (Harvard International Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN.
Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Univ. – Law) and Emilie Hafner-Burton have a new piece on “Opting Out: Derogations from Human Rights Treaties in National Emergencies“
Peter Margulies (Roger Williams University School of Law) has posted The Wages of Playing [...]

New NGO reports and academic articles of interest

Human Rights Watch has a new report on administrative detentions in Jordan. Read it here.The Open Society Initiative has a new report analyzing ethnic profiling both in ordinary policing and in counterterrorism, and finds that it is not just a violation of European laws and international human rights norms, but also an ineffective use of [...]

Al-Jazeera TV reports on Jordanian, Saudi anti-terrorism centres

Al-Jazeera Satellite Television at 2106 gmt on 19 May carries live within its “Today’s Harvest” programme a nine-minute report on measures adopted by Jordan and Saudi Arabia to counter terrorism.
Anchorman Muhammad Kurayshan and anchorwoman Iman Ayyad in the Doha studio begin by saying: “Jordan today launched a regional centre for training military units on combating [...]

UN Special Rapporteur Releases Report on the Role of Intelligence Agencies in the Fight Against Terrorism

In a new thematic report that will be discussed with states at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on the 10th of March, Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection of Human Rights while countering terrorism, focuses on the role of intelligence agencies in the fight against terrorism and the accountability problems [...]

ECtHR asks Britain to wait with Abu Qatada deportation

The European Court of Human Rights called Friday on Britain to postpone its deportation to Jordan of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada until after it had heard his appeal.
In response, Britain indicated that while it wanted to deport Qatada as soon as possible, it would abide by the court’s rulings.
“We are keen to deport this [...]

UK House of Lords rules that Abu Qatada can be deported with diplomatic assurances to Jordan

The cases are RB (Algeria) (FC) and another (Appellants) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and OO (Jordan) (Original Respondent and Cross-appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Original Appellant and Cross-respondent)
The unanymous judgment is a victory for the UK’s policy of relying on ‘diplomatic assurances’ that deported suspects will [...]

Amnesty International Annual Report on 2008 – focus on terrorism issues

Amnesty International is calling for a New Global Deal on human rights, because of a human rights investment gap by world leaders.
“It’s not just the economy, it’s a human rights crisis – the world is sitting on a social, political and economic time bomb,” said Irene Khan.
Read the report from May 2009 on 2008’s events [...]

Abu Qatada’s bail revoked by SIAC after hearing secret evidence in closed session

The court of appeal quashed earlier the home secretary’s decision to deport Abu Qatada, also known as Muhammad Othman, to Jordan, because it recognised that in Jordan he would face a trial founded on evidence extracted under torture. Earlier this year Othman was released home on bail with a 22-hour curfew and extremely restricted conditions. [...]

New Human Rights Watch Reports on UK Diplomatic Assurances

United Kingdom: Stop deportations to Risk of Torture: focusses on two important appeals in the House of Lords this month that will test the reliability of no-torture promises from the governments of Algeria and Jordan.