Differences Between the U.S. and the UK in Fighting Terrorism

WAR ON TERROR: Bush talked about a "war on terror", that therefore was governed by the law of armed conflict rather than criminal law; in he UK, terrorists have been treated as criminals, not combatants, with the aim of preventing this kind of crime.

EXECUTIVE POWER: the U.S. President was given by the Congress "all necessary and appropriate force" against terrorism (immense power on the executive); in the UK the executive has never been so strong.

EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION: the practice of rendition means an unlawful seizing of a person in one country in order to remove him to stand trial in another country.
The U.S. approach is that if a defendant is duly indicted in an American court, the court will not enquire how he came to be in the country at all: this behaviour led to important violations of rights because it legitimated the effective kidnapping of people who weren’t in fact in charge of any crime (e.g. El-Masri, Maher Arar).
The British government is not shown to have been complicit in the U.S. programme of extraordinary rendition.