Civil rights campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW)...

Civil rights campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed concern over recent EU moves to crack down on terrorism.
It feels the common definition of terrorism proposed by the European Commission endangers freedom of speech, assembly and association.
It maintains the Commission proposal for a European arrest warrant does not guarantee the right to a fair trial and threatens the international refugee protection system.
The group called on EU Member States to try international criminals themselves rather than extraditing them to countries that allow the death penalty. And it urged them to refrain from detaining suspects indefinitely without judicial review.
The organisation feels that the proposed EU arrest warrant does not sufficiently protect citizens against arbitrary action or abuse by states. HRW wants the arrest warrant to explicitly prohibit the return of any person to a country where torture or the death penalty might be applied.
The group is especially concerned about the conclusions adopted by the September 20 justice and home affairs Council. There, the Ministers called on the Commission "to examine urgently the relationship between safeguarding internal security and complying with international protection obligations".
According to the 1951 Geneva Convention, refugees cannot be returned to a country where they risk further persecution. Yet exceptions can be made if there are reasonable grounds for believing the refugee is a security threat to their host country (article 33).
The human rights lobby fears that Member States may use this exemption to transfer refugees to jurisdictions where the death penalty could be imposed or where they may be tortured.