Prof. Helen Duffy
Helen Duffy runs an international legal practice, ‘Human Rights in Practice,’ and is Gieskes Chair of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Grotius Centre of the University of Leiden. Her areas of specialisation in her academic and practical work include terrorism, security and rule of law. Her practice engages in strategic human rights litigation and she has litigated groundbreaking cases in the European, African and Inter-American regional systems and before international and national courts and bodies. Cases address a broad range of rule of law issues such as CIA rendition and torture (e.g. Abu Zubaydah v Poland/Lithuania), terrorism prosecutions (e.g. Sabbeh v Egypt), judicial independence (Garzon v Spain), slavery or trafficking (e.g. Mani v Niger) and genocide (e.g. Plan de Sanchez v Guatemala). Before setting up her own practice in 2011 she was Legal Director of INTERIGHTS, and prior positions include Legal Director of the Centro para Accion Legal en Derechos Humanos Guatemala, Counsel to Human Rights Watch, and Legal Officer International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her books and publications include ‘The War on Terror on the Framework of International law (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2015.)
Recent cases of attacks by released terrorist prisoners highlight issues around the risk of re-offending posed by former terrorist prisoners. What are the appropriate processes and systems for managing and risk assessing such individuals, and to what extent is rehabilitation possible in the context of terrorist offending? This Policy Brief will explore these and related […]
On May 19th, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they were commencing terrorist proceedings related to a February 24 stabbing attack at a massage parlour in Toronto. In doing so, they claimed that this attack—in which an unnamed 17-year-old male killed a woman and injured one other individual—was inspired by what they call ‘Ideologically Motivated Violent […]
In 2013, four young British men from West London travelled to Syria to join ISIS. Dubbed ‘The Beatles’ by their hostages, and subsequently the global media, this British ISIS cell allegedly became responsible for at least twenty-seven beheadings of Western hostages. Six years have since gone by and despite their capture the remaining two members […]