The Weaponisation of Time: Indefinite Detention as Torture

After 9/11, American officials authorized numerous contentious counterterrorism practices including torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, trial by military commission, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. While these policies sparked global outrage, the Bush administration defended them as legally legitimate. Government lawyers produced memoranda deeming enhanced interrogation techniques, denial of habeas corpus, drone strikes, and warrantless wiretapping lawful. Although it rejected torture, the Obama administration made similar claims and declined to prosecute abuses. This book seeks to understand how and why Americans repeatedly legally justified seemingly illegal security policies and what this tells us about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. It argues that legal cultures shape how political actors interpret, enact, and evade legal norms. In the global war on terror, a culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover—to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations—in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing. In this context, law served as a permissive constraint, enabling abuses while imposing some limits on what could be plausibly legalized. Cultures of legal rationalization stand in contrast with other cultures prevalent in American history, including cultures of exception, which rely on logics of necessity and racial exclusion, and cultures of secrecy, which employ plausible deniability. Looking forward, legal norms remain vulnerable to manipulation and evasion. Despite the efforts of human rights advocates to encourage deeper compliance, the normalization of post-9/11 policy has created space for the Trump administration to promote a renewed culture of exception and launch bolder attacks on the rule of law.

Download Full-text

Indefinite Detention of Immigrant Parolees: An Unconstitutional Condition?

Harvard Law Review ◽

10.2307/1342716 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 116 (6) ◽

pp. 1868

Keyword(s):

Indefinite Detention

Download Full-text

Human rights abuses at the limits of the law: Legal instabilities and vulnerabilities in the ‘Global War on Terror’

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210517000377 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 2-23 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Rebecca Sanders

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

War On Terror ◽

State Violence ◽

Legal Compliance ◽

Liberal Democracies ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Human Rights Abuses ◽

Indefinite Detention ◽

Protection Of Human Rights ◽

Global War

AbstractLaw following and law breaking are often conceptualised as polar opposites. However, authorities in liberal democracies increasingly deploy a strategy of what I callplausible legalityin order to secure immunity and legitimacy for proscribed practices. Rather than ignore or suspend law, they construct legal justifications for human rights abuses and other dubious policies, obscuring the distinction between legal compliance and non-compliance. I argue this is possible because instabilities in legal rules make them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. By tracing American rationales for contentious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, indefinite detention, and ‘targeted killing’ practices in the ‘Global War on Terror’, I show that law need not always be abandoned or radically reconstituted to achieve troubling ends and that rule structures enable certain patterns of violation while limiting others. The international prohibition on torture is robust and universal, but provides vague definitions open to interpretation. Detention and lethal targeting regulations are jurisdictionally layered and contextually complex, creating loopholes and gaps. The article concludes by reflecting on implications for the protection of human rights. While law is not wholly indeterminate, human rights advocates must constantly advocate shared legal understandings that constrain state violence.

Download Full-text

Anti-terrorism Legal Regime of Pakistan and the Global Paradigm of Security: A Genealogical and Comparative Analysis

Review of Human Rights ◽

10.35994/rhr.v2i1.74 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 4-35

Author(s):

Syed Sami Raza

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

19Th Century ◽

Legal Regime ◽

Legal Form ◽

Early 19Th Century ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Legal Regimes ◽

Indefinite Detention ◽

Anglo American

Pakistan is often criticized for its anti-terrorism legal regime—which institutionalizes preventive indefinite detention, special courts, and speedy trials. Pakistani officials, on their part, rebut this criticism by pointing to the Anglo-American anti-terrorism legal regimes, and generally to “the global paradigm of security.” Interestingly, should we trace the genealogy of the anti-terrorism legal regime of Pakistan, we find rich historical-juridical linkages between the Pakistani and Anglo-American regimes. These linkages converge on, or at least begin from, the British law of high treason. This law was adopted in certain colonial regulations in the early 19th century. In this article I demonstrate how the legal form and substance of the high treason law and of certain other colonial regulations traveled through colonial and post-colonial security laws, such that they have recently come to converge with the global paradigm of security.

Download Full-text

Pre-Trial Detention and Control Orders Under British Anti-Terror Legislation Post 9/11: Balancing a Need for Security with the European Convention on Human Rights – An Overview

Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice ◽

10.22329/wyaj.v28i1.4494 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 185 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sascha-Dominik Bachmann ◽

Peter Galvin

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Criminal Law ◽

Legal Framework ◽

European Convention ◽

Foreign National ◽

House Arrest ◽

Indefinite Detention ◽

Control Orders ◽

And Control ◽

Article 5

Contemporary British anti-terror legislation has been characterised by an extensive use of extra-ordinary detention measures: the Terrorism Act 2000 and Terrorism Act 2006 contain provisions, which enable the extended pre-charge detention of terror suspects beyond the limits of normal criminal procedure. The now repealed provisions of Part IV of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 allowed the indefinite detention of foreign national terror suspects on a quasi-judicial basis. Its successor, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, enables the use of Control Orders, effectively a form of house arrest characterised by restrictions on an individual’s liberty. In short, these measures have in common the extensive limitation of the individual’s right to liberty under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Whilst the judiciary have curtailed the most abhorrent manifestations of such extraordinary measures, as detailed, the legal framework as it exists today, still raises ECHR compliancy issues. Legal reformation should be sought to end such an impasse by amending at the very least the statutory framework already in place. Ideally anti-terror detention provisions should be brought back within the sphere of criminal law and in compliance with the ECHR.La législation contemporaine anti-terroriste britannique a été caractérisée par l’utilisation considérable de mesures extraordinaires de détention : la Terrorism Act 2000 et la Terrorism Act 2006 contiennent des dispositions qui permettent la détention prolongée préalable à l’accusation de personnes soupçonnées de terrorisme au-delà des limites de la procédure criminelle normale. Les dispositions, maintenant abrogées, de la Partie IV de la Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 permettaient la détention indéfinie de ressortissants étrangers soupçonnés de terrorisme sur une base quasi-judiciaire. Son successeur, la Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, permet l’utilisation d’Ordonnances de contrôle, qui sont effectivement une forme de détention à domicile caractérisée par des restrictions sur la liberté d’un individu. En bref, ces mesures ont en commun de limiter considérablement le droit de l’individu à la liberté énoncé à l’Article 5 de la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme. Bien que l’appareil judiciaire ait restreint les manifestations les plus odieuses de mesures extraordinaires du genre, tel que détaillé, le contexte judiciaire tel qu’il existe aujourd’hui soulève encore des questions de conformité à la CEDH. Il faudrait préconiser des réformes juridiques pour mettre fin à une telle impasse, en modifiant tout au moins le cadre statutaire déjà en place. Idéalement, les dispositions de détention anti-terroristes devraient être ramenées dans la sphère du droit criminel et en conformité à la CEDH.

Download Full-text

14. Detention

10.1093/he/9780198848936.003.0014 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 519-559

Author(s):

Gina Clayton ◽

Georgina Firth ◽

Caroline Sawyer ◽

Rowena Moffatt

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Common Law ◽

Immigration Law ◽

Common Phenomenon ◽

Home Office ◽

Immigration Detention ◽

Indefinite Detention

This chapter focuses on the issue of immigration detention. The deprivation of liberty is one of the most serious infringements of fundamental human rights. In immigration law, individuals lose their liberty through the exercise of a statutory discretion by the Home Office or immigration officers. The chapter considers the statutory powers and executive guidelines, together with human rights and common law rules. The use of detention is an increasingly common phenomenon in the asylum process, and the key role of immigration bail is examined. The former use of indefinite detention for foreign terrorist suspects is discussed at the end of the chapter.

Download Full-text