Enlarge imageNEWCASTLE (Reuters) - Nordic states sounded caution on Thursday over a call by Britain to give ordinary citizens’ rights precedence over those of terrorism suspects facing deportation and possible torture abroad.
In a speech on Wednesday to the European Parliament, Britain’s home secretary, Charles Clarke, said judges should weigh up issues of national security against the rights of individuals facing expulsion when making their decisions.
He argued that if they did not, politicians should consider amending the European Human Rights Convention.
But EU partners, Denmark and Sweden, warned against undermining long-established human rights.
"It is a difficult question, because there is a responsibility to fight terrorism and fighting terror is to fight individuals and hindering them from committing terrorist acts," said Swedish justice minister Thomas Bodstrom.
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"At the same time, there is in the European Convention a ban against sending people to places where they face torture, which we have to respect."
Britain has insisted with growing urgency that the rights of suspects and defendants, backed by the courts, are hindering the fight against terrorism and taking precedence over the rights of ordinary citizens who could become victims.
Following the bomb attacks on the London transport system that killed 52 people on July 7, the government said it would send home radical clerics who could inspire terrorism if there were guarantees that they would not face torture or death.
But there have been no deportations since the plans were announced and legal wrangling is expected to delay any action for months or even years.
The European Convention says a person should not be deported to a country where they risk torture. Britain says judges stick to this rule regardless of whether that individual poses a risk to people in the country in which they are living.
"The current situation would make it sensible for member states to balance the interests of their citizens against the interest of individual people who might be deported and who might face the risk of ill-treatment abroad," said Lord Falconer, the minister who runs Britain’s court system.
However, Danish Minister of Justice Lene Espersen said it was legitimate to discuss the limitations imposed by the Human Rights charter, but up to politicians to draft better laws to ensure the Strasbourg-based court interpreted them more appropriately.
"Sometimes we are afraid as politicians to take responsibility out of fear that the court of human rights will take us to task," she said.
"So we make vague provisions and then when the judges take decisions we don’t like, we say the courts are making mistakes. But the courts cannot do anything else but read what is in our laws."
