Last week the Grand Chamber of the
European Court of Human Rights held an oral hearing in what is bound to
be a very important case, Hassan v. UK. The case deals with the
detention of an Iraqi by British forces in southern Iraq and his
subsequent release and death under unclear circumstances. As such it
raises both threshold questions on extraterritorial
applicability/Article 1 jurisdiction and substantive issues on the
relationship between human rights and international humanitarian law. Here is the Court’s press release on the hearings, and here’s the actual webcast of the hearings. Shaheed Fatima also has a good preview of the case over at Just Security.
The jurisdiction issue is made more complicated by uncertainties left after Al-Skeini as
to whether and when exactly the UK had effective overall control over
southern Iraq for the purpose of spatial model of Article 1
jurisdiction, as well as by the fact that the camp to which Hassan was
taken upon arrest was run by the US. The multiplicity of actors can thus
render both the jurisdiction and the attribution questions more
difficult. But I will not deal with them here. Rather, I want to focus
on the interaction between the ECHR and IHL.
In that regard, together with the pending Georgia v. Russia interstate case, Hassan presents
an excellent opportunity for the Court to articulate a clear and
systematic approach on IHL. Hopefully this is an opportunity that the
Court will take up, and the questions posed by the various judges during
the oral hearing are an indication that they will do so.
http://www.ejiltalk.org/hassan-v-united-kingdom-ihl-and-ihrl-and-other-news-in-extra-territoriality-and-shared-responsibility/
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