30 Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights (LRA) was placed on the Ugandan and US lists of terrorist organisations. New antiterrorist legislation was also introduced, and this legislation was in time used not only in reaction to LRA acts of terror, but against opposition politicians unconnected with the LRA. 2.6 Many current counter-terrorism laws and practices are similar to those in the past Many of the laws, policies and practices that States have adopted to confront the threat of terrorism today replicate some of those used in the past. Broadly defined criminal offences of terrorism, the creation of new criminal offences, the proscription of certain organisations, special powers limiting the rights of suspects, changes to criminal procedures to facilitate prosecution, the use of military jurisdiction over civilians, the resort to administrative detention or forms of administrative control, changed interrogation rules, the use of torture to gather intelligence, and the resort to armed force have all been tried before. There is extensive documentation about the devastating effect that these policies have had on human rights and the rule of law. Sometimes the parallels are almost surreal. Witnesses talked of the failed detention policies used in Northern Ireland as having led to “hundreds of young men in working class nationalist communities joining the IRA and creating one of the most efficient insurgency forces in the world”.32 It is now generally accepted that this policy of interning detainees alienated whole communities. One must wonder, 30 years later, what impact the sight of the treatment of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib is having on young Muslims (in Britain and elsewhere). The Panel concluded that there was a great value to current debates in examining past responses to violent conflict. 3. Military responses to terrorism Some governments characterised terrorism as a military threat, and one therefore that required primarily a military response. The violence may or may not have amounted to the level of an armed conflict,33 but the authorities chose often to treat the threat on an existential level: the armed forces were required to “defeat” or “eradicate” the terrorists if society itself were to survive. It may of course be necessary, from time to time, to have resort to a military response, but it was made clear to the Panel that reliance on military force (both within and beyond recognised situations of armed conflict), has often resulted in 32 Evidence received at the EJP Northern Ireland Hearing; Citation taken from the CAJ final submission. 33 For a discussion of the legal problems of considering terrorism and counter-terrorism as forms of armed conflict see Chapter Three.