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Europe's G5 to share counterterrorism databank
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| 11 April 2005 |
By Thomas Ország-Land
A highly sensitive, permanent databank is about to be set up by the security services of the UK, Spain, France, Germany and Italy, the EU's so called Group of Five (G5) countries. It will facilitate, under an agreed "principle of availability", an exchange between the national police forces of a wide range of personal information, such as fingerprints, DNA and licence-plate data from terrorism suspects, as well as descriptions of current and projected security operations.
The terrorist challenge has provoked tough law reforms sweeping Europe's national legislatures without, however, any EU consensus. The only common definition for the EU of the concept of "terrorism suspect" has been one proposed by Spain in an attempt to identify such a person according to "rational indicators" based on his associates.
The UK passed a radical counterterrorism law on 11 March providing for the introduction of "control orders" under which suspects can be indefinitely tagged or detained. The legislation was passed following heated debate inside and out of Parliament. Sir John Stevens, former chief of the Metropolitan Police, declared during it that up to 200 Al-Qaeda terrorists were operating in the country, posing a real threat of attack.
In the Netherlands, the killing in November 2004 of filmmaker Theo van Gogh has led to proposals for tough new measures to apprehend suspects, which involve the lowering of the burden of proof. In Italy, telecoms companies have been instructed to step up surveillance of communications. In France, detainees returning from Guantanamo Bay in the US have been imprisoned on arrival. In Germany, new laws allow the deportation of immigrants based on terrorism suspicion, and Minister of Interior Otto Schily would like to set up a central register of Islamic extremists.
There have been many calls for stricter EU rules on data protection. Human rights organisations have also been concerned at the erosion of basic tenets of justice that have been passionately protected by Europeans over hundreds of years. The new EU Constitution will incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into the law of member countries. However, many fear that respect for human rights will suffer in the prevailing atmosphere of tension generated by international terrorism.
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