I agree that terrorism calls for efficient police action. Whether the "only way" to be efficient is stretching the limits on inhuman treatment/torture (that was what they said in Algeria...), and whether it's necessary to create breaches in the rule of law or in dispositions of the law that guarantee a minimum of rights, is the question. My feeling is that there's too ready a tendency to want to do that without really making a case for it.

The usual fallacy in these cases (as in the US or UK)is to shift the moral question to the individual, as in "If you knew this guy could tell you who was going to blow up a hundred people, what would you do to make him talk?" - which neatly evades the responsibility of public authorities and the centuries-long evolution of laws and conventions restraining the power of the state. And anyway, how often is really efficient police work in this situation?