Extraordinary Renditions and Human Rights: Observations on the French Case

Abstract

The collusion of many European states in the CIA’s notorious practice of extraordinary rendition during the George W Bush Administration is by now well-documented. It was in the context of concerns about the potential involvement of the UK (one of the USA’s closest and most powerful allies on the continent) that the European Court of Human Rights first defined the phenomenon of extraordinary rendition. Those European States that connived with the practice of extraordinary rendition flights were close allies of the USA and/or had the facilities (i.e., NATO bases) which accommodated flight transfers. Not all allies were involved, however, and the notable absence of France from the list of high-profile, complicitous offending States is striking.

The paper seeks to describe and contextualize the wider role of France in counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of 9/11, noting in particular the collaboration of the French intelligence services with their American counterparts (including allegations of collusion in torture). It also discuss the liability of the French State and demonstrates how such liability still allows for limits where ‘secret défense’ and ‘actes de gouvernement’ are involved. The different types of difficulties in establishing liability of the State will be examined, notably through an examination of the Sassi and Benchellali twenty-year plus litigation where immunity of State officials when acting in the interests of national security is concerned. The paper is based on the publication ‘National Security, Accountability and Human Rights’ (The Irish Jurist, 173-187).

Bio

Marie-Luce Paris is Associate Professor in Law at the UCD Sutherland School of Law. She is the Academic Director of the UCD Centre for Human Rights. She was previously the School Head of International Cooperation and Academic Director of the French Law Programmes. Her primary research interests are in European human rights law, European public law, and comparative public law. She has also an interest in legal education and legal methods. Her publications include ‘The President as Commander in Chief in a Comparative Constitutional Perspective under French and US Law’, The Military Law and Law of the War Review (forthcoming 2021), Constitutional Law: France, International Encyclopaedia of Laws (co-edited with Sterck, Pouillaude & Foulon, Kluwer Law International 2019) and Rights-Based Constitutional Review: Constitutional Courts in A Changing Landscape (co-edited with Bell, Edward Elgar 2016). She is currently a PI in a Ulysses research project funded by the Irish Research Council that examines citizens’ rights in the Citizens Assemblies in France and Ireland. Her latest publication on which this paper is based is published in The Irish Jurist (‘National Security, Accountability and Human Rights’, The Irish Jurist, 173-187).