The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law will host Professor Elspeth Guild for the launch of her book “Extraordinary Rendition – Addressing the Challenges of Accountability”, on Wednesday the 14th of November at 15:15.
The event will be held in the Beijing Conference room of the RWI office.
Professor Guild will discuss how the US led War on Terror, that commenced after September 11th 2001, has become a vortex of torture, illegal detention and extrajudicial killing.
“It has implicated the intelligence services and even the governments of many European countries in illegal practices by placing reliance on their solidarity with the US as a trusted ally,” she says.
Guild argues that the investigation into the complicity of authorities, by journalists and judicial authorities in European states, has uncovered a terrible story of the failures of the rule of law.
One of the first such failures took place in Sweden when two Egyptian asylum seekers, Agiza and Al Zery, were rendered to US agents for expulsion to Egypt where they feared torture. The act of the Swedish authorities was condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.
However, Professor Guild explains that “many other European states have also been complicit in US practices, from hosting torture centres to providing critical ‘intelligence’ on their own citizens to assist US agents to carry out torture elsewhere.”
This book examines the issue from a European perspective and promotes enhanced democratic and judicial oversight of intelligence services to diminish the risk of repetition of these failures of rule of law.
About the Author
Elspeth Guild is Jean Monnet Professor ad personam at Queen Mary, University of London as well as at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. She is a partner at the London law firm, Kingsley Napley and an associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Elspeth is also a visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges and was special advisor to the House of Lords European Union Committee’s Inquiry into Economic Migration in 2005.
Her interests and expertise lies primarily in the area of EU law, in particular EU Justice and Home Affairs (including immigration, asylum, border controls, criminal law and police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters). She also researches EU privacy and data protection law and the nexus with human rights. She co-ordinates the European Commission’s Network of Experts on Free Movement of Workers which the Radboud University manages, bringing together academic experts from the 27 Member States providing national reports annually on the implementation of EU law in the Member States, thematic reports, regional conferences and a national conference each year. She is also co-editor of the European Journal of Migration and Law and Free Movement of Workers (the European Commission’s on-line journal) and on the editorial board of the journal International Political Sociology. She is co-editor of the book series Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in Europe published by Martinus Nijhoff.
Speaker: Professor Elspeth Guild
Date: 14th of November
Time: 15.15-17.00
Venue: Beijing conference room, RWI Offices, Stora Gråbrödersgatan 17B