Administrative Detention

The three-year research project has engaged in a critical legal analysis of the Israeli State practice of administrative detention in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

Administrative detention consists of deprivation of liberty, without charge or trial, based, in the main, on secret evidence, which can be renewed indefinitely. It entails significant limitations on the fundamental rights of detainees, at the stages of arrest, interrogation, imposition and renewal of an administrative detention order, and the treatment in, and conditions of, detention.

Dr Peter Langford and Dr Triestino Mariniello have authored an Advanced Research Report which completes this project on administrative detention. The Report commences with an overview of the legal character of Israel’s regime of administrative detention, which is a central element in the wider military governance of the Palestinian population in the OPT. It then subjects Israel’s use of administrative detention to a two-stage critical analysis. The first stage is based upon the extraterritorial application to the OPT of the norms of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. It reveals that the use of administrative detention against Palestinian civilians causes a number of grave breaches of both international humanitarian law and serious violations of international human rights law.

The second stage considers the potential liability, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), for international crimes resulting from the Israeli State practice of administrative detention. This potential liability arises from the preliminary examination launched by the Prosecutor of the ICC, after Palestine became a State Party to the Rome Statute of the ICC in January 2015. The Report examines whether Israel’s use of administrative detention could amount to crimes against humanity and/or war crimes under the Rome Statute.

The Report also provides recommendations to Israel, the European Union, UN Bodies, and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Dr Langford and Dr Mariniello have presented the Report at the European Parliament (Bruxelles) and at the House of Commons (London), as well as in several universities in UK and abroad.

Report administrative detention