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Vol. 35 (2015)
General Articles

Can States Withhold Information about Alleged Human Rights Abuses on National Security Grounds? Some Remarks on the ECtHR Judgments of Al-Nashiri v. Poland and Husayn (Abu-Zubaydah) v. Poland

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  • Elena Carpanelli
Elena Carpanelli
University of Milan-Bicocca

Published 2016-06-30

Keywords

  • European Court of Human Rights,
  • secret files,
  • national security,
  • right to the truth,
  • duty of cooperation

Copyright (c) 2016 ILS PAS

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Can States Withhold Information about Alleged Human Rights Abuses on National Security Grounds? Some Remarks on the ECtHR Judgments of Al-Nashiri v. Poland and Husayn (Abu-Zubaydah) v. Poland. (2016). Polish Yearbook of International Law, 35, 217-234. https://doi.org/10.7420/pyil2015h

Abstract

The judgments delivered by the European Court of Human Rights in Al-Nashiri v. Poland and Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland highlight the potential tension that may arise between states’ broad reliance on national security grounds to withhold disclosure of secret files and compliance with their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. The present article examines the above-mentioned judgments, focusing, in particular, on how (and to what extent) the withholding of secret information may infringe on the right to the truth and, as far as proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights are concerned, the state’s duty to cooperate with it.

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