The International Commission of Jurists was lucky in the timing of its report on counter-terrorism and human rights: Assessing Damage, Urging Action.

In the US, the new administration of President Obama was but a month old, promising a review of his predecessor’s ‘war on terror’. In the UK, the debacle of a misguided government campaign to increase pre-charge detention to 42 days helped precipitate a revived civil liberties movement that celebrated a recent Convention on Modern Liberty with an audience of more than 1,500.

Thus, the three representatives of the Eminent Jurists Panel of the ICJ who came to the UK to launch its report got a good hearing, in the media, at a public conference organised by Justice as the British section of the ICJ, and in private meetings.

The identity of the three illustrated the strength of the panel’s membership. For Arthur Chaskalson, the former chief justice of South Africa, the comparison of UK control orders that can restrict the liberty of terrorist suspects with house arrest and similar measures in apartheid South Africa proved irresistible. Hina Jilani lives very much closer to everyday terrorism than anyone in Geneva, London or Washington, the three cities in which the report was launched. She also has experience of arrest on public order grounds – for organising a protest by women against violence. Mary Robinson brings the experience of a head of state and a UN high official.

Given the membership of the panel, the lessons of the report are perhaps predictable. Do not deploy the concept of a ‘war on terror’. Do not commit, or connive in, abuses of human rights. Do respect international human rights and humanitarian law. Do use standard criminal justice measures rather than special emergency powers. Pass the minimum of specific terrorism legislation. Remember the paramount need to win hearts and minds from groups that you may stigmatise as whole ‘suspect communities’.

The panel held 16 hearings around the world and considered the position in 40 different countries. It could therefore compare US and UK reaction to al-Qaida to that of at least 12 other countries that had faced similar threats – from Algeria and Argentina to Turkey and Uruguay. It held a special hearing in Belfast to understand the lessons of Northern Ireland. This helped put events into context. In the 1990s, Algerian insurgent groups and counter-insurgent forces killed thousands. Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that just under 70,000 deaths resulted from the Shining Path insurgency a decade earlier – about half caused by the guerrillas and half by government.

If you want a country that swallowed the language of the ‘war on terror’, Argentina is difficult to beat. One of its generals was credibly reported with this statement of government policy: ‘First, we kill all the terrorists; then we kill all who helped them, and then we will kill all who did not help us.’

At one level, any comparison of the acts of the UK government with such countries is absurd. Only 15 people are currently the subject of a modified form of house arrest under control orders. Only 38 people ever have been. The longest curfew is 16 hours; the average 13. This is a long way from internment even though control orders represent house arrest or other limitations on liberty imposed at hearings where the suspect may not hear or directly comment on secret evidence.

Special advocates are provided who can see and comment on all the evidence even if they cannot discuss it with the suspect. Yet even the government’s own reviewer, Lord Carlile, suggests two ways in which these could be curtailed. First, intercept evidence could be allowed in criminal trials – shifting most of these cases into the usual criminal justice system. Second, control orders could have a maximum length of two years. The House of Lords has recently expressed concerns about whether fair trial rights are adequately respected in control order hearings.

Most seriously, and at an international level, it is now pretty clear that the UK has been complicit in the torture of suspects. It would, indeed, be nigh on impossible for any country to be as close an ally of the US as the UK and not be contaminated by US practices of direct and indirect torture – after all, the US approved simulated drowning at the highest level. The case of Binyam Mohamed does not offer an attractive view of the operation of British intelligence services. And it is possible that more evidence of co-operation in extraordinary renditions may yet emerge.

The report’s fundamental theme is effectively an extended argument with one of Tony Blair’s soundbites after the 7/7 bombings. The ICJ argues that the ‘rules of the game’ have not changed. The normal criminal justice system can be used to prosecute those who use or threaten violence for political ends just as much as for any other. Principle coincides with pragmatism – it is much better to deny those disposed to violence the oxygen of martyrdom. Peace negotiations at the end of most terrorist outbreaks involve acknowledgement of human rights abuses on both sides.

The ICJ report might just help the movement behind the Convention on Modern Liberty to successfully argue that issues like 42-day detention or unenforceable offences, such as glorification of terrorism, should be removed from political debate and legislative implementation. They have more to do with political posturing than effective policy-making. They infringe human rights as well.

Roger Smith is director of the law reform and human rights organisation Justice