• the current international regulations for air traffic do not give adequate safeguards against abuse. There is a need for states to be given the possibility to check whether transiting aircraft are being used for illegal purposes. Within the current legal framework, states should equip themselves with stronger control tools; • international rules on state immunity often prevent states from effectively prosecuting foreign officials who commit crimes on their territory. Immunity must not lead to impunity where serious human rights violations are at stake. Work should start at European and international levels to establish clear human rights exceptions to traditional rules on immunity; • mere assurances by foreign states that their agents abroad comply with international and national law are not enough. Formal guarantees and enforcement mechanisms need to be set out in agreements and national law in order to protect ECHR rights. The European Court of Human Rights has, for decades, incorporated many of these principles into its case law. The non-expulsion to countries where the individual would be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment was first established in Soering.417 In that case, the Court held that to extradite the applicant to the US to face a charge of murder would amount to inhuman and degrading treatment because the applicant would be exposed to the death row phenomenon. Post-Soering, it is therefore necessary to receive an assurance that the death penalty will not be applied. The Soering judgment also extended the principle of non-refoulement to cover cases where the return would result in a flagrant denial of justice although this was not applicable in the Soering case. As already mentioned, in Chahal418 the Court held that Article 3, ECHR would be violated if the applicant, a Sikh terrorist, was deported to India in the knowledge that on his arrival he would be likely to be tortured. This ruling was made despite assurances from India that he would not be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, as the Court found that the Indian Government was not in a position to ensure such guarantees. The fact that his presence in the UK was not in the public interest was not sufficient to justify exposing him to torture. This landmark decision established that national security and counter-terrorism strategies cannot take precedence over the absolute obligation to protect people from torture. The blanket nature of this protection is emphasised in D. In that case the applicant was a convicted drug-trafficker who had been diagnosed with AIDS while in prison in the UK. He could not be deported to his country of origin, St. Kitts, because he had no family there, no 417 Op. cit., note 303, ECtHR, Soering v. UK. 418 Op. cit., note 144, ECtHR, Chahal v. UK. 144 Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights