Madam, - The right to due process is clearly established in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Geneva Conventions, as well as in the practice of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and national tribunals.
Nevertheless, a raft of legal practitioners in the United States (including several Ivy League scholars) are now endorsing the brazen violations being perpetrated by the US administration at camps Delta and Iguana through their involvement with the proposed military tribunals.
These tribunals harbour disastrous consequences for the human rights of detainees, children and international law generally. The international community, including this country, is being complicit in these abuses. At least four steps need to be taken urgently.
Firstly, the Taoiseach and the European Council of Ministers must condemn without reservation the detentions, which to date they have not done with any publicly determinable force. Secondly, they must condemn outright any attempt to try these detainees under the newly proposed military tribunals. Failure to condemn is an illegal facilitation of this situation under the International Law Draft Articles on State Responsibility. No amount of fudging can escape this fact.
The third matter is essentially one for the legal community, but is no less important. The Law Society of Ireland, the Bar Council of Ireland and our legal academic scholars should condemn and boycott any involvement, participation in, or support of the proposed military tribunals by their US colleagues.
Fourthly, we and our nearest neighbour must re-visit our transatlantic alliances and re-focus our attentions on the European matrix of human rights and democracy. Tony Blair in particular would do well to take the advice of his wife's chambers rather than deny its respected and public declarations. It is critical that we do not permit again that deadly mix of paranoia and patriotism to infect the rule of law and justice. It is imperative that we act to safeguard humanity's progress away from unilateralism, the bloody consequences of which are being felt, for the second time this century, everywhere from the Caucuses to Cuba. - Yours, etc.,
COLM V. FAHY, Sorrento Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin.