Speaker event with British Israel Law Association
Both the UK and Israel face the difficult task of preventing terrorism within their borders whilst maintaining a high standard of justice in relation to those suspected of terrorist activity. Lord Pannick, who was involved in the recent high profile case of dual British/Libyan citizen known only as AF, offered an insight into the ways the UK and Israeli governments have approached this fraught and controversial issue.
During the address, Lord Pannick contended that currently in the UK and Israel, ‘The most difficult and the most urgent problem that is facing the law’ is the question: ‘Can the state afford to grant human rights to those who are accused of seeking to destroy its very existence? Or to put it another way, equally tendentious, can the state afford to deny basic rights to such people if it is to maintain the values which make our society worth defending against the terrorists?’
He noted that, ‘In today’s world, respecting a person’s right to procedural fairness can have very damaging consequences for society.’ It is in this context that the ‘control orders’ regime developed and resulted in individuals like AF being confined to their homes for long periods each day and their communications with others severely restricted.
Furthermore, AF was not allowed to know the essence of the case against him. Of this, Lord Pannick observed, ‘This case raises sharply the issue about the very limits of legality: how can the law balance the competing interests of the right to know the case against you against the rights of other people, ordinary people, not to be blown up by terrorists who wish to destroy us and our civilisation?’
Commenting of the approach of the Supreme Court of Israel on this issue Lord Pannick cited Justice Aharon Barak in 2002, saying, ‘The court is doing all we can to balance properly between human rights and the security of the state. In this balance human rights cannot receive complete protection as if there were no terror and state security cannot receive complete protection as if there were no human rights.’
Following this address, Robin Shepherd offered his perspective, and emphasised the important role of the media in influencing the development of the law in this area. He contended that the debate in the British public domain ‘is still saturated around the assumptions of how we dealt with the IRA.’
He also argued that as such, it was necessary for organisations like Just Journalism to ‘provid[e] the public and our legislators with precisely the kind of context that enable them to make informed decisions that then translate into the law, which people like Lord Pannick and his circle in the United Kingdom can then interpret, defend and prosecute.’