25 years on, the legal legacy of 9/11 must be abolished

London — As the world marks 25 years since September 11th 2001, CAGE is calling for the full and unequivocal repeal of counter-terrorism laws.

A legal framework sold as an emergency, temporary response has instead become a permanent sprawling infrastructure of oppression that extends far beyond its original objectives. 

CAGE has spent over two decades working directly with people detained, surveilled, or prosecuted under this oppressive system.

These laws have continued to expand over the last quarter century. A barbaric response to an alleged specific threat, counter terrorism strategies and laws now reach into immigration enforcement, policing of protest, and mass surveillance of all activists who oppose the state in any area . From those who seek to expose complicity in genocide to climate change campaigners, the oppressive infrastructure ushered in as a response to the “Islamist threat“ has given the state free reign to redirect violence against any form of dissent. 

The War on Terror was a cover for the destruction of the so called international rules based order and used to invade, destroy and engage in mass killings of civilian populations in Muslim-majority regions. The resistance at both the domestic and international levels has not abated but instead grown. The Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that at least 4.5 million to 4.7 million people have died as a result of post-9/11 US counterterrorism war. 

The rule of law has been shredded and civil liberties evisicerated. As a result the true face of western colonial rule has been revealed. Whilst the genocide was in far away lands the political and ruling classes could use propaganda to deceive domestic audiences about the true nature of its crusades of mass murder.

However the counter insurgency mind set has now come home and the war on terror has been weaponised against domestic populations to eliminate any opposition and establish a facist security state that is eroding any pretensions of justice, equality and the protection of basic rights.

Those who remain silent and seek to reform the machinery of injustice are as guilty as the architects of the system that has led to the destruction of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said: 

"Twenty-five years on, most of what people will hear this week is about one day. What we've spent twenty-five years documenting is about what was built afterward, and it hasn't stayed where it started. The same tools built to justify Guantánamo are now showing up in immigration detention and in how protest is policed. That is not mission creep. That is what a permanent security state does. It finds its next target. The only adequate response is to abolish the powers that made it possible, not to seek a more nuanced approach."