The ICJ and Amnesty International have presented a submission on the draft of an Additional Protocol supplementing the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism.
In their submission, the ICJ and AI outlined before the Committee on Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Related Issues (COD-CTE) of the Council of Europe the general principles of human rights law related to the issue of foreign fighters and the implementation of Security Council resolution 2178(2014) and made observations on the draft criminal offences contained in the draft protocol.
The submission outlines positions and concerns with relation to:
- The lack of definition of central concepts like “terrorism”, “terrorist acts”, and “foreign fighters”
- The risk of introducing criminal offences lacking the clarity, accessibility and foreseeability required by the principle of legality
- The risk of conflation of of different legal regimes, notably of international humanitarian law and ordinary criminal law
- The need to investigate and prosecute existing crimes under international law
- The need to ensure that any criminalisation of acts or omissions must have a close connection to the commission of the principal criminal offence, with a real risk that such a principal criminal act would in fact take place
- Specific comments on the draft offences of participation in an association or group for the purpose of terrorism; receiving training for terrorism; travelling abroad for the purpose of terrorism; funding travelling abroad for the purpose of terrorism; organizing or otherwise facilitating travelling abroad for the purpose of terrorism.
CouncilofEurope-Submission-ForeignFighters-Advocacy-Legal Submission-2015-ENG (download the observations)