Ben Wallace: Human rights laws are protecting terrorists

Human rights laws including the ECHR have become a serious risk to national security and are thwarting efforts to stop terrorists, Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, has warned.

Speaking for the first time since he stepped down from his Cabinet role, Mr Wallace attacked the “lunacy” of legislation that he said was protecting terror suspects plotting against Britain from abroad by preventing their capture.

He told The Telegraph that, because of international treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights, defence secretaries were forced to choose between killing individuals, generally by drone, or leaving them to continue plotting.

Mr Wallace warned: “When we have a threat to the UK, this lunacy of being unable to render people across borders or arrest people in countries whose police forces are unacceptable, means that we are more often than not forced into taking lethal action than actually raiding and detaining.”

The former defence secretary said that, while under international law Britain can take action against an imminent threat in a foreign country, missions that could result in the rendition of a suspect – meaning the extrajudicial transfer of a suspect from one nation to another – were blocked.

Asked whether he had faced such situations as defence secretary, Mr Wallace said: “I dealt with such cases.”

He added: “Yes I came across plots, and thankfully we took action. But did I have the range of options I’d like to? No. I had very few options, and I wanted a wider set.”

He warned that the situation left the UK unable to conduct raids like the one carried out by the USA on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

“If we had found Osama bin Laden, we could not have done what the Americans did. We could not have done that type of raid,” he said.

He added: “We did have the right to deal with an imminent threat. We could have thrown a tomahawk missile. If we’d done the American model, where they flew in by heli, I would currently be told you can’t do that, because we can’t render them out of the country.”

Mr Wallace announced in July that he would resign as defence secretary at the next reshuffle and was replaced in August by Grant Shapps. He will step down as an MP at the next election.

Describing the growing risk to the UK, he criticised sentimentality towards individuals plotting to kill and maim British citizens, saying the Armed Forces must have the ability to capture Islamic State and al-Qaeda operatives alive.

The former defence secretary said the work that former justice secretary Dominic Raab had started on a Bill of Rights, which would have given UK courts powers to overrule European judges, would have helped to solve the problem.

“We need some clarity; we need to modernise the legal structures and law, to reflect the transnational nature of terrorism and threats,” he said. “It’s allowed terrorists in safe spaces with access to mobile phones to direct, inspire and equip people to kill British citizens.

“Terrorists take advantage of this. We are stuck in a path with a rendition policy that doesn’t recognise that there is a gap between extradition and non-compliant states.

“If you don’t have an extradition treaty… there are nations currently hosting terrorists who direct threats against Britain, and they know they do. They’re not going to comply or help.

“I’m not going so far as saying we should scrap the ECHR, but unless the international human rights bandwagon recognises the world we live in today is transnational, and technology has enabled like never before, far from guarding people’s rights, we’ll drive people to take more extreme measures.

“If you care about human rights, then you need to update yourself, because otherwise the option is, they’re dead. Surely you want them to have a trial in front of an independent judiciary and jury?”
Rwanda at centre of debate

The ECHR has been at the centre of a row over the Government’s plans to deport asylum seekers who enter the country illegally to Rwanda.

Deportation flights to the African country have been suspended since last June when a single judge from the European Court of Human Rights issued an eleventh-hour injunction blocking the first removal of asylum seekers.

The case is working its way through the courts, with Tories – understood to include Cabinet ministers – urging the Prime Minister to withdraw from the ECHR if the policy is ultimately blocked.

Mr Wallace said the UK had been lucky in the past decade because of the existence of benign airspace in places where terrorists operate.

These included Iraq, Afghanistan before the Taliban took over, and even in Syria, where the Russians have not stood in the West’s way as long as its aircraft are targeting Islamic State.

However, he is particularly worried about new threats emanating from Syria and Afghanistan, where he believes it will soon become even more difficult for UK Special Forces and the RAF to operate.

“We’ve been able to use drones and aircraft to make kinetic strikes against terror suspects,” he said. “But what happens when either that consent is withdrawn, or the airspace is no longer benign, yet you still have an imminent threat to Britain?

“We are not far off to the point when the airspace will be closed in Syria,” he added, warning that president Assad was near to taking total control of the country.

“We now have a problem where the British Government could have an Isis cell, plotting, planning, directing and equipping a murderous plan in Britain, and the only way to stop that would be a kinetic strike, or a raid across a friendly border, to interdict these people,” he said.

“The problem with the latter option is, under this current position, you are unable to do that, because should you raid across the border, and the individuals surrender, you can’t do anything with them.

“You can’t hand them to the Syrian regime, and you can’t drag them across the border, because rendition is viewed as illegal.

“We do our rendition through extradition, but how do you extradite people who pose an imminent threat to your people and citizens?

“How do you arrest people who are plotting, in an environment of tolerance by the host country, to do harm to Britain?”
‘A ridiculous catch-22 position’

Mr Wallace said the world was seeing a growth of safe havens for the “enemies of Britain”.

“Our options are reduced. In the past that might have been a kinetic strike from the air, but with air defence, it’s a much harder proposition to deal with.

“Traditional old-fashioned methods, what we call ‘outside-in’, where special forces can be dropped in to deal with the threat and remove it, is frustrated by the fear of what happens if they surrender. Then what do you do with them?”

Mr Wallace warned Russia would soon block access to Syrian airspace, and that in Afghanistan groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State were returning.

“Getting permission from the host government is one thing,” he said. “Getting an ECHR detention pathway is another thing.

“Somalia may say you can blow up al-Shabab because they’re our enemy as well, but if we go in and they surrender, we get told their detention pathway isn’t compliant. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 position, which doesn’t reflect the threat.

“There are a number of individuals who pose an imminent threat to the UK, who I would prefer to have captured, rather than deal with by a strike,” he added.

“We need to make sure that the defence secretary and prime minister of the future have at their disposal as wide a range as possible for safe spaces and ungoverned space. We currently don’t have that.

“If there was an Isis plot in some Central African country for example, under international law we have the right to take action with or without permission from the host nation, but we couldn’t capture the bad guys – we could only kill them.”

Source » telegraph.co.uk