On November 12-23, 2010, IDI's International Task Force on Terrorism, Democracy and the Law convened in Washington, DC for a two-day symposium on Detention of Terrorist Suspects. Established in December 2009 by the Israel Democracy Institute in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, the Task Force is comprised of 10 academic experts from the U.S., Canada, England, Germany, Turkey, and Israel, who engage in comparative legal research on the challenges faced by democracies fighting terrorism and the ways in which they have responded. This research enables to the identification of best practices that strike the balance between human rights and security needs. Innovative solutions are developed as a result of this research, which will enable democracies throughout the world to combat terrorism while upholding democratic values and protecting human rights.
Hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center, the symposium on November 12 focused on detention without trial of terror suspects and the use of secret evidence in legal proceedings involving terrorists. The two days of deliberation opened with a special briefing of some 40 Capitol Hill staffers in the U.S. Congress. This was followed by a keynote lecture on "Due Process and Detention," by Prof. Ruth Wedgwood, Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University and the US representative to the UN Human Rights Committee. Following the keynote address, which was open to the public, members of the Task Force presented the interim findings. Three topics were at the center of the discussion: detention in normal situations, detention in extraordinary situations, and evidentiary problems.
The second day of the symposium was dedicated to closed sessions in which the members of the task force arrived at a broad consensus on the conditions under which detention without trial should and should not be permissible, as well as on some necessary safeguards. A research paper delineating the Task Force’s recommendations will be available in early 2011. In 2011, the Task Force will tackle the issue of terror interrogations, at its upcoming session in Leeds, England.