The Gibraltar Shooting Case
European Court of Human Rights Case No. 17/1994/464/545
33 Pages Posted: 15 Oct 2008
Date Written: September 1995
Abstract
On Sunday, 6 March 1988, in Gibraltar, soldiers from the British "Special Air Services" Regiment, the SAS, shot dead three suspected IRA terrorists, Daniel McCann, Sean Savage and Mairead Farrell. In 1995, the European Court of Human Rights held that their killing had violated their "right to life", as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. The author, who was counsel for the applicants in the case (relatives of the deceased) examines this complex judgment, which has become a leading case on the use of force by law enforcement agencies in Europe. He shows that the case established that States are expected to exercise due diligence and care, even in anti-terrorist operations; and that the Court felt that it had a duty to examine "most carefully" whether the authorities of the State that killed have fulfilled this duty. He concludes that "last but not least, Governments will be aware that they will be subject to this scrutiny. In that sense, McCann is a victory for the rule of law over raison d'¿tat."
Keywords: human rights, right to life, european convention on human rights, terrorism, killings
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