December 10, 2024
Drapeaux de jordanie à l'aéroport et décollage de l'avion commercial. rendu 3D d'animation © max.ku, licensed under Shutterstock.
MENA Rights Group welcomes the United Nations (UN) Committee against Torture’s recommendations for Jordan to respect its obligations under the Convention against Torture. Jordanian authorities must work toward abolishing the practice of torture, holding perpetrators accountable, ensuring legal safeguards are afforded to all detainees, and prohibiting unlawful extraditions.
On November 6 and 7, 2024, the UN Committee against Torture (“the Committee”) assessed Jordan’s compliance with the Convention against Torture (“the Convention”). Prior to this review, MENA Rights Group submitted a report evaluating Jordan’s implementation of the Convention, which it ratified in 1991. On November 19, 2024, following its fourth periodic review of Jordan, the Committee released its Concluding Observations highlighting over 15 key areas of concern.
As highlighted in MENA Rights Group’s report, the Jordanian Penal Code’s definition of torture requires “specific intent”. In the absence of such intent, acts may be categorized as abuse or ill-treatment rather than torture, and hence be punished with lighter penalties. Moreover, Jordanian law does not explicitly ensure the absolute prohibition of torture, although this is specifically required by the Convention. In light of these concerns, the Committee urged the Jordanian authorities to adopt a legal definition of torture that complies with the requirements of the Convention.
The Convention requires state parties to guarantee detainees their fundamental legal safeguards, such as access to a lawyer and contact with family. The Committee regretted the absence of an explicit provision ensuring such safeguards in Jordanian law. Echoing MENA Rights Group’s findings, the Committee expressed concern over “consistent reports that suspects are held by the police, particularly by the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), for days before being brought before a judicial authority – sometimes in a situation of incommunicado detention – and are denied access to a lawyer and to family”.
Furthermore, the Committee dedicated “Arbitrary detentions under the new 2023 Cybercrime Law” as a specific area of concern. Since its enactment, the law has been weaponised by authorities to harass, punish, and intimidate individuals expressing critical opinions online, amid an escalating crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly – a trend highlighted in MENA Rights Group’s report. Among those targeted under this law is peaceful activist Kamil al-Zoubi, who was sentenced to prison for social media posts expressing support for Palestine. The Committee urged Jordanian authorities to safeguard civic space and recommended that they amend the Cybercrime Law by “clearly defining the crimes listed in the law, whose broad and vague wording under the current version of the law, does not meet international human rights law requirements”.
Additionally, the Committee recommended that Jordan abolish the practice of administrative detention and amend the Crimes Prevention Act, which contravene the Convention. As highlighted in MENA Rights Group’s report, the Crimes Prevention Act provides local governors with excessive powers to place individuals deemed as “about to commit a crime” in administrative detention, while circumventing the fair trial safeguards usually provided in criminal proceedings. Recently, the Jordanian authorities have particularly weaponised administrative detention to punish individuals involved in the mass protests and online advocacy supporting Palestine.
In its Concluding Observations, the Committee also expressed concern regarding “the reported lack of independence and impartiality” of the State Security Court (SSC), an exceptional jurisdiction subordinated to the executive branch. According to MENA Rights Group, SSC prosecutors used coerced confessions and self-incriminating statements obtained through torture as evidence against defendants during trials. Consequently, the Committee recommended that Jordanian authorities “adopt effective measures to ensure that coerced confessions or statements are inadmissible in practice”.
The Committee also urged Jordanian authorities to respect the principle of non-refoulement, which guarantees that no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture. The Committee expressed concern that governors or security bodies could facilitate deportation decisions without due process nor possibility for appeal, citing the case of Khalaf al-Romaithi, an Emirati peaceful dissident and member of the “UAE94” who was extradited from Jordan to the UAE in 2023 outside any judicial process.
Importantly, the Committee urged Jordan to guarantee that “deportation decisions, including extradition requests from the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council (AIMC), are subject to an independent judicial review procedure that allows the affected individual to challenge the decision before an impartial court.” This recommendation is founded upon MENA Rights Group’s evidence-based research about the AIMC, a body of the Arab League empowered to facilitate politically motivated extraditions between Arab League member states, thereby enabling transnational repression. The Committee’s direct reference to the AIMC in its Concluding Observations is groundbreaking, marking the first time a UN Treaty Body addresses the role of the AIMC in potential violations of the Convention Against torture, to which all Arab League member states are parties.
MENA Rights Group strongly supports the Committee’s recommendations and calls on the Jordanian authorities to adopt immediate measures to address the serious human rights violations committed in breach of the Convention against Torture, and to implement the recommendations contained in the Committee’s Concluding Observations.
