BRUSSELS, April 27: Amnesty International is warning of an increasingly “worrying” trend in Europe of sacrificing fundamental rights in the fight against terrorism.

Dick Oosting, head of the international human rights group’s European Union office, has asked the EU to do more than talk and urged it to make the planned new agency for fundamental rights a truly effective body.

“There is a lot of rhetoric over the need for the right balance between security and rights,” said Amnesty’s European director. “But there is actually little to show, in terms of real determination and real efforts to support this assurance.”

In the EU in particular “there has been a marked incapacity to seriously tackle the impact of the anti-terror measures on human rights,” he said.

Mr Oosting went on to explain: “Amnesty International has noted worrying trends in relation to the fight against terrorism.

“It is very evident that the emergency legislation in some member states has led to the incomunicado form of detention being used in Spain and, in Great Britain, cases of indefinite detention without trial, the use in trials of evidence obtained via intelligence [which legally is not allowed], possibly extracted by force using torture.”

The Amnesty representative also talked of “other member states” who practise the “extradition of suspects without due trial to countries where they are at risk of torture.”—By arrangement with AKI