Riga, 22/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Targeting “foreign terrorist fighters”, the Protocol signed this Thursday morning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riga takes account of these young Europeans - more than 4,000 of them, according to recent estimates - who have left Europe, mostly to join the ranks of the group “Islamic State”, with some of them to return to Europe and commit acts of terrorism.
This phenomenon, which emerged in the framework of the Syrian conflict, was not covered by the Convention on the prevention of terrorism which was adopted by the Council of Europe (CoE) in Warsaw in 2005 and it is this legal gap that this Protocol sought to plug, on the basis of Resolution 2178 of the United Nations Security Council of September 2014, which establishes a definition of “foreign terrorist fighters”.
This Resolution, which was adopted in 2014, called upon the States to take legal action and - in proportion to the gravity of the acts - to target any individual involved in any process of this kind in any way.
“The terrorist organisations have flexibility in their action and a fluidity in their resources, which require an early and adapted response”, stressed executive director of the United Nations anti-terrorism committee, who was in Riga. “The UN Resolution was a response, but it could not be applied without a connection to bodies such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or the CoE. We had to move quickly and the CoE has put together, in just under a year, a fair and transnational response which complies with the rule of law”.
Deliberate involvement in a terrorist group, receiving training for the purposes of terrorism, travelling abroad for the purposes of terrorism and financing or organising such trips will now become criminal acts.
The Protocol also calls for the exchange of information between States, calling for the creation of contact points available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and for the creation - in this framework - of accelerated procedures. All of this is to be implemented “in full respect of the obligations on human rights, particularly the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression, freedom of association and the freedom of religion”.
The aim is to pursue legitimate and necessary ends within a democratic society, it is stressed, which excludes “any form of arbitrary, discriminatory or racist treatment” and calls for the principle of proportionality of the sentence. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stressed these elements when the Protocol was submitted to it for review at the April session this year.
The text, which was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 19 May, has now been signed by 17 states: Germany, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Spain, Estonia, France, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
The European Union is also a signatory - both of the Protocol and of the Convention of the Council of Europe for the prevention of terrorism - which sends out an “important political message”, said Carlo Chiaramonte, head of the anti-terrorist division of the Council of Europe.
The European Commission and the Council of the EU have been heavily involved in drafting this additional Protocol and, this afternoon, Commissioner Avramopoulos announced a revision, in 2016, of the framework decision against terrorism, which will take account of the legal instruments added by this text. It must itself be ratified by at least six of the signatory states in order to enter into force within three months. The general opinion in Riga this morning was that we will not be kept waiting long. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)