The Rights of Terrorists in the Rule of Law

The rule of law has to be followed to safeguard human rights not the interests of the violators

People expect that men of law be alert to the possibility of dangers that threaten their society because there are always villains to interpret law in their own interests. But the worst part is when the lawyer collaborates to represent on behalf of the wrong parties to flout the law and to interpret it in the way that pleases them. Obviously enough, some lawyers care about the thickness of the bundles of dollars more than caring about promotion of justice and abating the possibility of threats posed by their clients. Allan Gerson is one among other attorneys involved in representing the terrorist MKO in its efforts to be removed from the State Department List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

In an attempt to justify the suit on behalf of MKO he said that in his presidential election Obama claimed, “… the rule of law would be followed, and followed strictly. Above all, human rights were to be safeguarded zealously. … The PMOI sued because it was fed up with the State Department’s persistent refusal to remove it from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list despite a previous order of the same Court requiring that this be done unless the State Department demonstrated valid reasons to justify the contrary”.

The Secretary Hillary Clinton, a lawyer herself, had agreed to re-designation of MKO according to the rule of law and based on justifiable, classified and unclassified, evidences and reasons. However, it was not surprising to expect the terrorist group fill a law suit against the State Department, given that the defendant had reasonably dragged its heels to follow directives mandating due process to a designated terrorist group. No law is breached to its real concept. Nobody demurs that the rule of law has to be followed strictly, but a listed terrorist group is in no position to be frustrated by and fed up with the regulations of a legal body whose responsibility is to safeguard the interests of the nation. It is the gaps in the laws and the skill of lawyers that embolden a leashed violator of human rights to wage a law struggle to be unleashed.

It is not so bad a thing to hear a terrorist group renouncing terrorism and trying to prove its decisiveness. But it also has to prove that it respects the principles of human rights for the violation of which it has been repeatedly chastised. Majority of its members residing in two camps in Iraq, Camp Ashraf and Temporary Transit Location TTL, are living under the worst, sub human condition as it claims. The solution is easily provided; the group should, as already agreed, move all residents in Camp Ashraf to TTL to undergo refugee possess as a preliminary to be sent to other countries. The impediment to fulfill the process is MKO itself that well indicates another example of violating human rights. How can the State Department trust that the group will not return to terrorism as it fails to respect the least rights for its own insiders? It has already announced that the key factor to a review of MKO’s tagging is its cooperation in complete relocation of its members to the transit center. Then, when MKO pays huge sums of money and roams the courts of law to sue the State Department it means that neither it respects human rights and obligations nor it intends to fully cooperate with the concerned international bodies.

The rule of law has to be followed to safeguard human rights rather than the interests of the violators. Regardless of the struggles of the paid lawyers, and so far as the regulations warranty the priority of human rights, a lawyer should be observant of serious threat to the world security and peace, otherwise he is a collaborator with his clients.