concerning when lethal force can be used. Case law has given some guidance as to the use of lethal force: • the lethal shooting by soldiers of suspected terrorists who drove through a checkpoint without stopping was found absolutely necessary in the circumstances in order to give effect to the lawful arrest;277 • it was not absolutely necessary to use firearms to arrest a non-violent offender who posed no threat to anyone. Under those circumstances, the use of firearms would be unlawful even if it meant the loss of opportunity to arrest;278 • the use of firearms where the applicant was shot several times, although not killed, by police officers after going through a red light was a violation of the right to life due to the lack of legal and administrative safeguards for the use of firearms.279 “In action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection” There is no established definition in international human rights law of a riot or insurrection. But, where hundreds or thousands of people are throwing projectiles at the security forces this can be a justification for reliance on the use of lethal force. However, for the use of such force to be absolutely necessary those projectiles must be likely to cause death or serious harm to the law-enforcement officers. Throwing stones at fully armed and protected officers is unlikely to justify resort to lethal force. Appropriate riot control procedures and equipment must also be used.280 In relation to prison uprisings, the proportionality of the use of fatal force should be strictly applied. Therefore, when lethal force was used to contain a prison uprising involving serious and violent offenders resulting in extensive loss of life, the manner of the use of lethal force was found to be excessive and disproportionate and consequently a violation of the right to life.281 277 “Their conduct must also be assessed against the background of the events in Northern Ireland, which is facing a situation in which terrorist killings have become a feature of life. In this context the Commission recalls the judge’s comments that, although the risk of harm to the occupants of the car was high, the kind of harm to be averted (as the soldiers reasonably thought) by preventing their escape was even greater, namely the freedom of terrorists to resume their dealing in death and destruction”, ECommHR, Kelly v. UK, Application no. 17579/90, 13 January 1993. 278 ECtHR, Nachova and Others v. Bulgaria, Applications nos. 43577/98 and 43579/98, 6 July 2005, para. 107. 279 “[T]he Court considers that, as far as their positive obligation under the first sentence of Article 2 (1) to put in place an adequate legislative and administrative framework was concerned, the Greek authorities had not, at the relevant time, done all that could be reasonably expected of them to afford to citizens, and in particular to those, such as the applicant, against whom potentially lethal force was used, the level of safeguards required and to avoid real and immediate risk to life which they knew was liable to arise, albeit only exceptionally, in hot-pursuit police operations”, ECtHR, Makaratzis v. Greece, Application no. 50385/99, 20 December 2004, para. 71. 280 In finding a violation of Art. 2, the Court stressed that “the use of force may be justified in the present case under paragraph 2 (c) of Article 2, but it goes without saying that a balance must be struck between the aim pursued and the means employed to achieve it. The gendarmes used a very powerful weapon because they apparently did not have truncheons, riot shields, water cannon, rubber bullets or tear gas. The lack of such equipment is all the more incomprehensible and unacceptable because the province of Şırnak, as the Government pointed out, is in a region in which a state of emergency has been declared, where at the material time disorder could have been expected”, op. cit., note 252, ECtHR, Güleç v. Turkey, para. 71. 281 “Given the circumstances that surrounded the crushing of the riot at the San Juan Bautista Prison; the fact that eight years after the riot occurred there is still no knowledge of the whereabouts of the three persons to whom this case refers, as was acknowledged by the Minister of Foreign Affairs stating that the victims were not among the survivors and that ‘three of the [non-identified bodies] undoubtedly correspond to those three persons;’ and the disproportionate use of force; it may be reasonably concluded that they were arbitrarily deprived of their lives by the Peruvian forces in violation of Article 4(1) of the Convention”, IACtHR, Neira Alegría and Others v. Peru, Series C No. 20, 19 January 1995, para. 76. 108 Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights