The Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) participated at the High-level expert meeting on “Bringing terrorists to justice before national courts: developing guidelines to facilitate the collection of information and evidence by military and other relevant criminal justice actors within a rule-of-law framework”. The event, organized by the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate of the United Nations, was held in New York on 9-10 April 2018.
PAM, represented by Amb. Jean-Paul Laborde, PAM Senior Advisor on Counter-Terrorism, highlighted the importance of keeping the scope of its work on the Security Council resolutions on Foreign Terrorists Fighters crimes and related terrorist crimes. Security Council members expressed their agreement with what expressed by PAM on this regard.
Amb. Laborde also stressed the relevance of working with the support of the Parliaments in order to overcome possible legal difficulties and find not only legal but moreover suitable political solutions, and reiterated the full availability of PAM to help in that endeavor. Amb. Laborde underlined that many legal issues are in connection with the admissibility of evidences in this context.
An additional, extremely sensitive question was mentioned by PAM: the necessity of knowing, clearly, what judicial authorities have jurisdiction: the ones of the military which are deployed on the ground or the ones of the country in which the military operates.
The outcome of the New York meeting will be the drafting of guidelines on how to operate to bring FTF and other terrorists to justice in using information/evidence collected in the battlefield, in accordance to the rule of law and human rights.
PAM will continue working with its member parliaments in order to raise awareness and provide assistance in the drafting of effective legislation and will use the outcome of the New York meeting as essential background information.