Using Criminal Justice to Foster US-EU Cooperation on Counter-terrorism

EU and US political leaders and elites share the same overall threat assessment of terrorist networks but differ over the choice of strategy to defeat them. While President Bush's "war on terrorism'' has relied on the military to suppress terrorism, incarcerating terrorist suspects in Guantanamo and refusing them access to US federal courts, Europeans have stressed a holistic and multilateral approach to the struggle, giving a greater role to the criminal justice system. Abandoning due process and violating suspects' human rights betrays the very values and principles upon which the democracies supposedly being defended are founded. Courts in Europe since 9/11 have demonstrated that it is possible to bring terrorists and conspirators to trial and to convict them on the basis of overwhelming evidence. Hence, the strengthening of national judicial processes and international judicial cooperation should remain the major objective of the transatlantic alliance.