Pubdate: Thu, 20 Sep 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: International
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Donald G. McNeil, Jr.

EUROPE MOVES TO TOUGHEN LAWS TO FIGHT TERRORISM

BRUSSELS --- The European Commission proposed drastic changes today in 
European law enforcement in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the 
United States.

If Europe adopts the measures, judges would be able to issue arrest and 
search warrants that could be enforced across the continent. Extradition 
procedures would be eliminated. All 15 member nations would also adopt the 
same definition of "terrorist crimes" with higher penalties and a 
Europe-wide agreement on sentences, with life imprisonment being the maximum.

The ideas are not new -- they arose two years ago at a conference of 
Europe's justice ministers in Finland -- but they were revived this week 
after the attacks in the United States, the arrests of suspected Islamic 
fundamentalist terrorists in Belgium and the Netherlands and the discovery 
that suspected pilots of the planes used in the suicide attacks had lived 
in Germany.

The proposal, which followed an announcement by the United States on 
Tuesday that it would expand its power to detain immigrants suspected of 
crimes, was presented to the European Parliament by Antonio Vitorino, 
minister of justice and home affairs for the European Commission, which is 
the executive branch of the European Union. It rests, he said "on the 
mutual recognition of judicial decisions of the member states, and becomes 
the cornerstone of European judicial cooperation."

Under the proposal, the Europe-wide warrants could be used to seek not only 
terrorists, but also organized-crime figures, traffickers in arms, people 
or drugs, and people accused of sex crimes against women and children.

As of now, only six of the European Union's 15 countries -- Britain, 
France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- even have legislation 
mentioning terrorist acts, and their definitions vary.

The proposals by the commission will be put before a meeting of European 
justice and home affairs ministers on Thursday and then on Friday before a 
special European Union session on terrorism. If those bodies endorse them, 
and the Parliament passes them, they would still need to be written into 
the legislation of all 15 member nations to become law.

Right now, said Leonello Gabrici, Mr. Vitorino's spokesman, organized crime 
figures, smugglers and terrorist cells often have operations in several 
countries and use legal variations to frustrate attempts to arrest members 
or seize their assets.

Bureaucratic rules and loopholes sometimes make it hard for the police in 
one country to assist another.

Under the proposed changes, "the important thing is that what triggers 
police and judicial mutual assistance is the crime itself, not the person's 
residence or nationality," Mr. Gabrici said.

With common definitions of serious crimes, a prosecutor in France, for 
instance, could get a warrant enforceable under German law and ask the 
German police to execute it, instead of having essentially to explain his 
case to a German prosecutor, confirm that it violated German law and wait 
for that prosecutor to get a warrant from a German court.
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