ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore how various forms of intelligence cooperation may constitute breaches of the substantive obligations of a state under international law (primary norms), and how both states – the one directly engaged in human rights violations and the other one providing some form of assistance through its intelligence agency – could be held to account by other states under international law rules concerning state responsibility (secondary norms). After a brief introduction, in the second part of the chapter different forms of intelligence cooperation agreements will be discussed, in order to determine whether their status under international law affects the obligation to comply with norms of international human rights law. This chapter will only deal with one of the most pressing contemporary problems of intelligence cooperation: the use of information or intelligence which was derived through grave human rights violations, including violations of peremptory norms of international law such as the prohibition of torture. In this context, the third part of the chapter will assess states’ primary obligation to respect the absolute prohibition of torture. The fourth part will then outline the framework of secondary rules concerning state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, which are derived from a state’s participation in another state’s breach of its primary obligations. The concluding part of the chapter will outline how both human rights law and the law of state responsibility provide elements for a legal approach to providing effective remedies to victims of human rights violations.
