Monday, October 30th, 2017 The Foreign Terrorist Fighter Problem and UK Responses

Description

How have UK counter-terrorism laws and policies adapted to the phenomenon of ‘foreign terrorist fighters’? The question immediately engages the problem of who fits that description and whether the label is apt. For these purposes, the focus will be upon persons linked to conflict or terrorism in Iraq and Syria associated with the establishment and defence of Islamic State (Daesh). The UK’s law and policy responses, which have been amongst the earliest and most comprehensive of any country, involve a broad catalogue which covers: the formulation of strategy; criminal justice, policing and prosecution aspects of response; and non-criminal justice aspects of response, including travel and citizenship restrictions and the countering of violent extremism. The diversity of responses raises the issue of how to select between them and which should be given priority, including as applied to special cohorts such as minors. This presentation is based on recent work undertaken for the UK government and will seek to provide statistical and interview data to inform the analysis.

About the speakers:

Clive Walker is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice Studies at the School of Law, University of Leeds, where he has served as the Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies (1987‐2000) and as Head of School (2000‐2005, 2010). In addition to police law and human rights, key aspects of his research work are terrorism legislation and counter-terrorism policies and laws. He has written extensively on terrorism issues, with many published papers and books not only in the UK but also in other jurisdictions, especially Australia, Malaysia, and the USA. In 2003, he was a special advisor to the UK Parliamentary select committee scrutinized what became the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, from which experience he published The Civil Contingencies Act 2004: Risk, Resilience and the Law in the United Kingdom (Oxford University Press, 2006). His books on terrorism are recognized and cited widely and include Terrorism and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Anti‐Terrorism Legislation, (3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014), and the Routledge Handbook of Law and Terrorism (Routledge, 2015). He has given evidence to many parliamentary inquiries (including in Canada and Australia) and has been appointed by the Home Office as Senior Adviser to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (David Anderson QC) since 2010. For his work with public bodies, he received the title of Queen’s Counsel honoris causa in 2016.

Kent Roach is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Prichard-Wilson Chair of Law and Public Policy. He works in a variety of areas involving both criminal justice and constitutional laws. He has done significant and far-reaching work on counter-terrorism law both in Canada and many other parts of the world. His work explores the role of judicial review in a democracy, constitutional remedies provided by courts and other institutions, the effect of criminal justice systems on Aboriginal people in Canada, as well as miscarriages of justice and other failures of the criminal justice system. Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2013, he was one of four academics awarded a Trudeau Fellowship in recognition of his research and social contributions. In 2015, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2016, named (with Craig Forcese) one of the top 25 influential lawyers in Canada (change-maker category) by Canadian Lawyer. He was awarded the Molson Prize for the social sciences and humanities in 2017.