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EUROPEN UNION. HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTION SHOULD NOT BLOCK EXPULSIONS, UK HOME MINISTER
September 7, 2005: British Interior Minister Charles Clarke told EU lawmakers that it was necessary to rethink the European Convention of Human Rights on the ban on extraditing people to countries where they risked torture and execution.
"It seems to me we have to give the same rights to those humans who want to travel without being blown up on an underground train," Clarke earlier told reporters in London.
"If the judges don't understand that message and don't take decisions which reflect where the people of the continent want to be, then the conclusion will be that politicians ... will be saying we have got to have a change in this regime."
Clarke's tough stance on human rights drew criticism from the EU assembly's Liberal Democrats and Greens.
"We do not agree ... that the human rights of the victims are more important than the human rights of the terrorists," said Graham Watson, British leader of the Liberal Democrats.
"Human rights are indivisible. Freedom and security are not alternatives, they go hand-in-hand ... Much as the public may dislike it, suspected terrorists have rights."
Watson quoted criticism by human rights lawyer Cherie Booth -- wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- of Britain's hardline anti-terror measures.
"To ... invoke a form of summary justice would in the words of the lawyer Cherie Booth cheapen our right to call ourselves a civilised society," he said. (Sources: Reuters, 07/09/2005)
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