RISK ASSESSMENT, COUNTER-TERRORISM LAW & POLICY; A HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED ANALYSIS:

Assessing the UK’s Pre-emptive and Preventative Measures of Countering Terrorism, Interaction with Article 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Potential Role of Risk Assessment

Abstract

The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 had a significant impact upon how governments counter terrorism. The UK introduced and implemented an array of measures, each taking a pre-emptive and preventative approach, to tackle terrorism. The change in counter-terrorism law and policy post-9/11 has, as this thesis will show, increasingly become reliant upon fear-based risk and uncertainty rather than evidence-based guilt.

This thesis will examine some of those UK measures used post-9/11, which were seen as some of the more controversial measures. When analysing each measure there will be an assessment of the human rights issues associated with those measures, specifically under Article’s 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The assessment of these rights with each measure will provide a legal understanding of the wider academic and legal implication of those measures, these include the right to a fair trial.

Having assessed the human rights implications of each measure, a risk assessment is undertaken. This enables further analysis of each measure and holistically identifies the wider risk implications of such counter terrorism measures. Such risks may include negative perceptions of the police, the UK or provide indirect support for the radicalisation of new terrorists.

This process is developed within the thesis and becomes known as the ‘tri-relationship'. Throughout, the measures examined will be seen to erode those human rights principles ordinarily guaranteed by the criminal justice system, for example liberty. Instead, the measures give way to a new counter-terrorism justice system which has become increasingly normalised by the measures introduced and accepted by the courts. This is despite the implications on human rights and risks involved. This thesis will show that the measures introduced by the UK to achieve securitization, fail to achieve the long-term protective aims of the UK Counter-Terrorism Strategy.