Frank Foley

This chapter examines how counterterrorism policies and operations affect human rights in liberal democracies. It analyses how practices such as detention without trial, torture and extrajudicial killings impact negatively on human rights. The chapter also reverses the causal arrow to consider whether and how human rights standards can have an effect on counterterrorism policy and practice. Can norms of individual liberty significantly constrain a state's response to terrorist groups? And does respect for human rights help or hinder the effectiveness of counterterrorism? The chapter presents a framework which enables readers to critically analyse the academic literature on these questions. It illustrates the key factors and mechanisms at play through case studies, ranging from Northern Ireland in the 1970s to the United States 'war' against jihadist terrorism.

Though Britain and France have faced a similar threat from Islamist terrorism in the years following September 11 2001, they have often responded in different ways to the challenges it posed. This groundbreaking work offers the first in-depth comparative analysis of counterterrorist policies and operations in these two leading liberal democracies. Challenging the widely held view that the nature of a state's counterterrorist policies depends on the threat it is facing, Foley suggests that such an argument fails to explain why France has mounted more invasive police and intelligence operations against Islamist terrorism than Britain and created a more draconian anti-terrorist legal regime. Drawing on institutional and constructivist theories, he develops a novel theoretical framework that puts counterterrorism in its organisational, institutional and broader societal context. With particular appeal to students and specialists of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will engage readers in the central debates surrounding anti-terrorist policy.

Existing studies on democracies' involvement in torture emphasise how governments have been able to circumvent the international anti-torture norm and shape public discourse on the issue through powerful rhetorical strategies of denial and exception. Less attention has been paid, however, to the rhetoric of opponents of torture and how it impacts on governments and security agencies. This article proposes a typology of four common arguments against torture, which make use variously of ethical, utilitarian and 'shaming' rhetoric. These arguments often take a narrative form and are extensively contested by governments. Drawing on the literature on rhetorical coercion, I argue that anti-torture narratives can play an important role in constraining democratic states and significantly reducing their perpetration of torture. Yet the multiplicity of narratives at play opens up opportunities for governments to accept some messages against torture while simultaneously contesting others in a way which enables them to continue their involvement in torture. I develop this argument through a comparative analysis of the role of torture in two British counterterrorism campaigns-against Irish republican terrorism in the 1970s and against jihadist violence after 9/11. Differences in the content and salience of the narratives advanced by critics of the government during the two time periods explain much about why the British government contested some arguments against torture, but accepted others. This variation helps to explain in turn why British security agencies carried out coercive interrogations on a wide scale during the 1970s, while their perpetration of torture was significantly reduced in the post-9/11 case.

Since 2001, the vast majority of terrorist suspects in the UK have been dealt with through criminal prosecutions and trials in the ordinary English courts. However, the British government has also been determined to give itself extra powers to deal with a relatively small proportion of suspects that its feels cannot be prosecuted through the courts. This article focuses on the introduction of powers that allowed the government to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial and to restrict individuals’ movements through the imposition of control orders. These measures have been highly controversial and have been contested by important sections of British society. In this context, the powers have either been significantly constrained by the courts or dropped by the government. Analysing these developments, the article shows how norms of security, liberty and proportionality have helped to shape and constrain Britain’s legal response to terrorism over the last decade. Such constraints raise questions about the commonplace belief that liberal democracies in the post 9/11 world are moving towards the development of increasingly authoritarian responses to terrorism.

A reassessment of the French approach, which once made the country Europe’s 'counterterrorist powerhouse’, is long overdue : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11341186/Charlie-Hebdo-attack-is-Frances-counter-terrorism-model-still-the-example-to-follow.html