Confronting Terrorism - Assessing the Legal and Political Challenges
The roundtable discussion, raises key questions such as: are governments making the right decisions and employing the right methods? How can we strike the proper balance between fundamental rights protection and effective counter-terrorism? Are our current international and legal instruments adequately equipped to deal with rising terrorism especially in a time increasingly characterized by asymmetric warfare?
The roundtable features: Reuel Marc Gerecht, Resident fellow at AEI; Guglielmo Verdirame, Lecturer in International Law at the University of Cambridge; and Sophie In't Veld, Member of the European Parliament in the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Bio
Sophie In't Veld
Sophie in ´t Veld (41) is the new, young, dynamic representative in the European Parliament for the Dutch social-liberal party D66. Although she is in her first term as member of Parliament, Sophie already knows the inner workings of European politics. Before she was elected, In ´t Veld was for several years secretary general of the ELDR-group in the Committee of the Regions.
Born in 1963 (Vollenhove, the Netherlands) In ´t Veld lived from the age of seven, after a three year long stay in Surinam, in the Dutch cities of the Hague and Delft. After her university-level study in medieval history, Sophie worked as freelancer in private companies and public institutions. From 1993 she worked as assistant to former MEP Johanna Boogerd. Sophie is married and lives in Brussels.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI. An expert in Middle East affairs, he has focused since 9/11 on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of "Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997) and "The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy" (AEI Press, 2004). He is a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other publications. Mr. Gerecht formerly held positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Emanuele Ottolenghi
Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi is Executive Director at the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. He previously taught Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony's College, Oxford University.
He holds a degree in Political Science from University of Bologna, Italy, and a Ph.D. in political theory from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since 1998 he is at Oxford.
His research focuses on Israeli domestic politics, specifically coalition and party politics, and elections, post-Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict (mainly the Oslo era), Europe's new anti-Semitism and European attitudes to the Middle East. He is currently finishing a book on Israel's electoral reforms in the 1990s.
Dr. Guglielmo Verdirame
Guglielmo Verdirame (born in Reggio di Calabria, Italy) is a university lecturer in law at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. He is a leading expert on UN accountability issues and on refugee law.
Before coming to Cambridge, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford between 2000-2003. He holds a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics, where he studied with Christine Chinkin, an LL.M. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a laurea in jurisprudence from the Università degli Studi di Bologna.
He has conducted extensive field research on human rights and refugees in Africa, particularly in Kenya, during his time as a research officer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, as well as on behalf of various human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Article 19 and the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights.
His book, coauthored with Barbara Harrell-Bond, "Rights in Exile: Janus-faced Humanitarianism" was published by Berghahn Books in 2005. He has a further book "UN Accountability for Human Rights Violations" forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
well Sophie is also right on how to tackle the broader issues connected to terrorism like alienation of minorities.....but nobody mentioned why many things are easier for the terrorists today than 20 years before, namely the easy availability of conventional weapons which mainly the US sold to all kinds of insurgent groups around the world.
Although she's not the expert, I REALLY agree with Sophie's take on how there should be protections for people who are abused under situations where the government is given more power to deal with extreme situations. Sure, if terrorists are going to attack us, yes, I'll let the government do what they need to protect their country. However, if someone abuses that power and people are losing rights and privileges and are being abused under these new powers, there should be retribution under the law.