Law - new material (60)
01 January 2007
Mass Rendition, Incommunicado Detention and Possible Torture of Foreign Nationals in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. Reprieve and Cageprisoners, 22.3.07, pp13. This report expresses grave concern at "the fate of 63 prisoners believed to be held in secret detention in Somalia and Ethiopia, apparent victims of a mass rendition operation from Kenya involving nationals of at least 16 states: Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Eritrea, France, Kenya, Oman, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sweden, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Yemen". Many of the victims were among hundreds of people arrested in joint US, Kenya and Ethiopian operations on the Kenyan/Somali border in December 2006 and January 2007. See: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/070321HOArenditionreportfinal.pdf
Hilfloser Datenschutz [Helpless data protection]. Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP 85 (No. 3/2006), euros 7.50, 112 pp. This latest issue of the investigative journal of the German civil liberties association Institute for Civil Liberties and Public Order (Institut für Bürgerrechte & öffentliche Sicherheit) sketches the progressive undermining of data protection in law and practice since the declaration of the war on terror following 11 September 2001. Then interior minister Otto Schily, who once defended members of the Red Army Fraction and sympathised with the Socialist Student Union and now advises a company specialising in biometrics, proclaimed that data protection had been "exaggerated" in the past and was instrumental in devising a succession of anti-terrorist laws that contributed to the general demise of data protection and privacy. The articles in this issue outline, analyse and criticise the plethora of legislation stripping away individual rights vis a vis the state whilst meaningless data protection clauses are being used as a legitimating veneer. Increased law enforcement powers such as the retention of traffic data, undercover police methods, surveillance of telecommunications, the EU framework decision on data protection, common databases of police and secret services and the conflation of anti-immigration and security measures are outlined and critiqued, amongst others, on grounds of the discrepancies that exist between the alleged aims of anti-terrorist measures and their actual effect and the ideological underpinnings of security-driven law-making. Also useful is the summary section on EU developments, the quarterly chronology of civil liberties and anti-terrorism news from Germany, the literature review and online resources update. Available from CILIP, tel +40 (0)30 838 70462, fax +40 (0)30 775 10 73, e-mail: info@cilip.de, http://www.cilip.de
Weapons of Mass Destruction Bill, Michael Matheson MSP. SCOLAG Legal Journal no. 352 (February) 2007, p. 25. "In 2001 the Scottish parliament passed the International Criminal Court (Scotland) Act 2001, which provided for prosecution of those who gradually commit crimes against humanity by wantonly and indiscriminately, but slowly, murdering large groups of people and wreck their homes, villages, towns, cities and environment. The Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Bill 2007 seeks to prevent those crimes. Thus, the Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Bill is a "crime prevention" Bill, which morally, logically and legally follows the precedent of the International Criminal Court (Scotland) Act 2001."