 Hefyd, benedig nhw. Fygoedd y Lwais Llywodraeth.olumnai. Fygoedd y Llywodraeth. Fygoedd y Llywodraeth's 2016 yn ystod y lechder. Fygoedd am Caryl Tann, prof. y Llywodraeth, a'r head y Llywodraeth. Mae'r lechder anul yma'r awgwr i'r ystod dynnu'r ysgrifennu. Mae'r prof. Maesud-Badgeryn bydd wedi ddwy'n fwybê'r 2011, dwi wedi'u gweithio'r hwnnw i'r Gwylwyr Llywodraeth. Mae'r prif erbyn o'r leisio'r anseptiol yn ystod i'r anseptiol ar ystod i'r anseptiol ac mae'r anseptiol yn ystod i'r leisio, ddod o'r ddod o'r ddod ddod David Llammy, Jeffrey Robertson, QC ac Baroness Hale, rwy'n bywyd yn ddod o'r anseptiol a'r anseptiol ar ddod. A'r anseptiol yn ystod i'r anseptiol yn ystod i'r anseptiol. Yn yr anseptiol yn oeddiad, d aspir wedi'i all susod o'r anseptiaeth Cybl y 100th anifarysu ym mhwyl. Yn 1947 a 1974, y Llyfrgell yn ymdweithio'r ddweud a mae'r ddweud yn ym 1975 ac mae'n ddweud yn ymdweithio'r ddweud ymdweithio'r ddweud. Mae'r ddweud yn ymdweithio'r ddweud yn ymdweithio'r ddweud yn y ddweud y mhwyl 1990. Yn ymdweithio, rwyf yn gyfnod dyma 165 ddweud ymdweithio'r ddweud a dyma yng nghymru dyma'r ddweud y pwysig a dyma'r ddweud, mae'r ddweud yn ymdweithio'r ddweud a'u ddyddion yn ymddweithio'r ddweud yn ymdweithio'r ddweud. Mae ddyddion yn mynd i ond wrth i ddweud gaelidiol ydym ni am ddiwyd ar gyflent hwnnw i fynd fy ngwych â'r wych sy'n ychynig yw rydych chi'n dechrau'r cyстаpeau i'r Pratys yng Nghymru yn yng Nghymru, ac mae'r bobl cy guardianiadau cyrstythol yng Nghymru yn ystafelladau a holdsiaid yn bod yn byw. Ac mae'n cystafelladau cyrstythol sy'n gyda ddau ni'n cael y cyfrifiad ymddangos een gynhaff o'r practes ynglynell cyfnodol. Mae unrhyw yma llawer o pholwch am ysgail ym Ysgail a Llywodraeth Cynraddurol, woeid i'r cwrsiau yn gweithio y mynd i'r llwanhau cwrsion. Mae maen nhw'n ymgafelau sy'n llwyddoedd yn hunoedd, oherwydd rydym nhw'n ei fod yn sgol ei fydd phoedd o grefyd ac mwylau o dwybodol, Felly, rydyn ni'n ymwyfyr o'r llwysoedd yma, ydych chi'n gweithio'n gwell ac rydyn ni'n rŷnodd i'r bwysigol arallraddol. Rydyn ni'n hynny, mae ymddangos y ddweud yn ymddangos y Llywodraeth yn ddweud yn y ddweud yn y ddweud yn y ddweud. Mae'n fwy o amser yn gwneud hynny o'r llwysoedd, neu'r ddweud yn y ddweud yn y ddweud, First of all the fire exits up there and if the alarm goes off please go in those directions please turn off your mobile phones so as not to interrupt proceedings and finally this event is being filmed and I'm required to inform you of that. I also would like to thank two people Christine Jumper and Scott Newton, two colleagues without whom, without whose efforts this evening would not be taking place. Scott Newton is looking after this lecture and also a series of other public lectures that we will host later in the year. In fact please join me now in welcoming Scott who will introduce our distinguished speaker. Good evening everyone. Welcome distinguished visitors, friends, colleagues and students past and present to the SOAS law inception lecture. Now this is a special iteration of a special occasion. It's the centenary year inception lecture even though SOAS is 96 years older than this lecture series and this is the fourth lecture in the series. It was established to serve as an inspiration for our students, contribute to public debate and enhance our academic environment. I am therefore especially gratified to introduce as tonight's speaker a figure who emphatically ticks all three boxes. Michelle Massur, Queen's Council, renowned criminal barrister and matchless defender of the seemingly indefensible. Now Michelle is an outsider who succeeded not only in making his way inside the legal profession but in reaching the top of it, the supreme insider's outsider. He was called to the bar in 1979 and took silk 20 years later. Considering the circumstances of his arrival here as a Jerusalem schoolboy sent for boarding in 1966 who reluctantly surrendered aeronautics for the arts, his success in cracking this notably hard cultural and professional nut is stunning. It is especially fitting that we have given Michelle this SOAS law forum. Michelle of course has a long-standing SOAS connection and has been a close friend, colleague and partner of a number of us here over the years, particularly those with an interest in the Middle East and North Africa. But Michelle's presence here is fitting in a deeper way I think. For SOAS has over the course of this eventful century been transformed from an institution of the center and the inside to an institution of the periphery and the outside by which I mean the global outside, the global south. Once upon a time, as you may know, we train colonial administrators. Now we are taken up with the world colonialism left in its wake and its claims and concerns and perspectives inform our scholarship and our politics in equal measure if I may presume to speak for at least a fair number of colleagues both in law and across other disciplines. And of course, so many of our students nowadays, including a healthy contingent from Palestine, I should note, take a journey similar to that Michelle took half a century back, although in notably greater numbers and with notably greater support in solidarity not as a solitary like Michelle. I will leave Michelle to tell you in greater detail about his unlikely outsider's career. Suffice it for me to note that compelling biographical incidents and personal qualities brought Michelle to a career not simply in the law but a career injustice and those are only in rare cases the same thing. Occupation and then annexation of his birthplace shortly after his arrival here turned his natural advocacy skills honed at speaker's corner in an age when the plight of Palestinians was not as generally appreciated as it has since come to be into formidable adversarial and forensic arms. Michelle gravitated toward criminal justice because at least ideally it is the arena where the great power disparities between the state on the one hand and the alleged defenders who are often at the margins of society on the other where those disparities are neutralized, where equality of arms at least notionally, where equality of arms trumps stark inequality in virtually every other respect, social, economic and cultural. All defense barristers are in some basic sense taking on the establishment because their job is to challenge the state to take apart the crown's case. But Michelle took on the establishment in an emphatic sense because beyond his defense of clients and murder, kidnapping, drugs and gangland cases, he rapidly came to specialize in a class of defendants who have historically been held in particular opprobium and contempt including the IRA defendants and the Harrods and Brighton bombings, those accused of the Sudanese and Afghan air hijackings, the accused gunmen in the shooting of the Israeli ambassador and most recently the defendant in the recently concluded fertilizer terror trial. And you should know he got a lot of them off. Now, in championing the rights of what I just called the seemingly indefensible, Michelle was of course doing what every defense council must necessarily do to hold up the integrity of the adversarial system and ensure that it is fit for purpose and functions to purpose. But in developing his line in the defense of terrorism and related defenses, Michelle was also engaged in justice in a more encompassing sense, in political justice. That is in highlighting the sorts of historical collective grievances that often motivate those accused of such offenses and that distinguish them from others without redeeming or justifying them, mind you. So you should know that Michelle has advised in international criminal cases as well such as that of Omar al-Bashir, the president of the Sudan. Now, I've invited my colleague Kevin John Heller to serve as discussant. Kevin is professor of criminal law here. He's a notable authority on international crime and international tribunals and he as well and he's the author of a number of books, including a book on the Nuremberg trials. He is also a professional colleague of Michelle's in an extended sense because he too has a lifelong career as defense council and he has defended everyone from petty criminals to Radovan Karagic in the ICTR, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. I'm sorry, the ICTY. Now, I've planned for Kevin to speak after Michelle does. I will in fact put a few questions to the both of them and they can in turn respond and after their responses to that initial set of questions, I will open the floor for questions from everyone else here. Now, I will say at this point and I'll remind you when the time comes, please keep your questions succinct and please keep them civil. I know that many of the issues here will provoke fierce passions, but I expect everyone here, including us up on stage, to reign in those passions and to conduct our discussions here in an exemplary civil fashion. Without further ado, I'm going to turn things over to Michelle. Thank you, Scott. Can I say whatever I'm introducing those terms, I always try to see who is he talking about because sometimes it's difficult to recognise yourself, you know, they dig you out, they go to the internet and they check you out and sometimes you say, well, who is this person they're talking about? It's so nice. I wish I had his qualities. First of all, I want to say thank you to Sowers for inviting me to be here on this incredibly special occasion, the centenary and the inception lecture. When I initially got the call from my colleague and friend, Dr Jenkins, I was touched. I thought you must have got the wrong Michelle Massey because I thought she must be thinking of some Frenchman and about that I'll tell you a bit later. And then it dawned on me that what Sowers wants really is not to have some erudite discussion because I cannot follow the steps of Lady Hale and all these other guys are very high powered academicians. I am not, never been, never aimed, never tried to project I am. What I've done for 30 years as my good friend Scott just now said is I've tried to give voice to those who have no voice. And by choosing law and by choosing criminal law, I perhaps in my own way tried to bring awareness and fight a case and to bring a practical application to what you are studying. Lots of you are now fashionably studying human rights. At my time we did not have that option. I don't know if we had but I certainly did not have it. So again I'm very grateful to Sowers. It's a great fantastic institution. It is a very unique institution. Your director, Lady Amos, who I've met before is a fantastic figure and is really a role model. She has achieved so much herself. She has been a foreign office minister, Secretary of State for International Development and Lord President of the Council. And so this university that you are studying at is very special. Not only does it teach you, I hope, academically, excellence. But I hope, and this is my message to you, is I hope it will help you bridge the gaps that exist in our cultural understanding of what I call the other. Because a lot of the cases that we hear around today, be the UK domestic, the insane violence we see, the international unfettered violence that is being unleashed as we see it, I say that the root cause of it is a failure of dialogue. So what I would like you to have today as a message, as part of my message to you, I know the lecture has been entitled by my very brilliant writer Dr Scott Newton to say from the old city to the old building, we'll come to that later. But I have to deviate because it seems to me that part of your role as students here is not simply to study the ABC of criminal law and ABC of land law, which I never understood, but that's another story. It still defeats me, but it is to also understand how to get on with your colleague with whom you may not agree politically. And so is in my judgment one of the best schools in the country, if not the world, which enables you to have this opportunity to debate, to engage, and not to exclude. There's a tendency, unfortunately, of exclusion. I don't agree with you, therefore I will not engage with you. I, for my part, when I was your age, and perhaps younger, I always found it fascinating to actually engage with people who disagree with me. And in fact, I was invited very recently at Oxford Union to take part in the Oxford Union debate. It was a very heated debate on the Israel-Palestine debate. The hall was packed. People were outside. This was being relayed. And in the middle of my speech, one of my main opponents said, I'm swung. He moved over to my side. It does ensure that I'm a good advocate. It just simply shows that you really must engage with the other. Because you see, unfortunately, there's a tendency, as we all know, we tend to speak, we tend to speak to preach to the converted. I've been to meetings where people applaud, but they applaud each other all the time. You never get new recruits. So I hope that part of what I'm saying to you today, all of you, you come out and say, well, I'm going to engage with my fellow student. I disagree with him or with her fundamentally on whatever issue it is that you're going to talk about. But engage, debate, study. I've had over 2,000 pupils and many pupils for the last 20 years. And the one thing I always tell all lawyers, I forget it sometimes myself, is listen twice as much as you speak. Because if you listen, you begin to understand what the other side is trying to say. And by understanding, you might win the argument because you might find that little gem that is hidden in their argument, which may be a flawed argument. And so I begin my discussions with you today. I hope it will be an open discussion because my style has always been to engage and not to lecture from up down and happen to be up, but consider me sitting or standing amongst you. And the main theme tonight, I would like to ask you to consider one of the main themes today. And to go back to the title of the debate, of the speech tonight, from the old city to the old Bailey. Do all of you know what the old Bailey is? Yes, no? Yeah, well, it's the most famous, perhaps criminal court in the world. So it's very nice because I was, I'm from Jerusalem. I, from the old city of Jerusalem. But in fact, that wasn't where my parents came from. My parents came from one part of Jerusalem, which is now called West Jerusalem. They became refugees before my birth. And so I was brought up in what became the old city of Jerusalem, what is the old city of Jerusalem. And hilariously, because we are Catholics, we are offered refuge in a Catholic hostelry. And the name, you'll be surprised by that, was called Casanova. I, of course, for those of you who speak Latin or Italian, it means not the don't you want to dance a seducing woman in Catholic Jerusalem. No, he was, it's just the name, it means the new house. So I grew up in this hostelry. We were eight people in a room. I remember till now we had to debate you in a little kind of metal tub. So as a child, my earliest memories of the old city were of displacement, of hurt, and of a deep sense of injustice. And of course, my parents told the story how they fled one part of Jerusalem to the other part of Jerusalem with nothing except their suitcase because they were told you'll be back the following day. So I grew up as a boy looking over the part of the old city. And my father saying, I don't know how I could that house, but it was certainly the most beautiful red-tiled house. It may not have been our old house, but he certainly said, this is where we came from. And so I had this sense of grievance deeply seated in me. And it developed in me the sense of how can we really, how can you correct wrong? How does one correct wrong? And so the idea even at that young age and my sister dug up when she knew I was coming to speak today, an essay I had written when I was about maybe 13, 14, about the need of justice and how can one implement justice and how does one implement and retake, forgive me, a right that is yours. Now I don't know if any of you know the Palestinian story, it's a nice narrative. Every Palestinian family has a key because every family who left and was displaced took with them the key and they still obviously some of them hope to go back to that house. So I grew up a little bit like with the Alan movie, we have an old rusty key hanging from somewhere and we all have that key. So I grew up with that sense of grievance, how do you remedy it? And so I began to think of law and a lot of Palestinians of my generation in fact became lawyers, studied law became international lawyers and I, as I grew up in Jerusalem, I studied in a school which was French run. In fact till now I still do my math tables in French. I cannot do three and three is nine, let's do it in French because it was so drilled into me as a child, you know, is enough. And so I grew up in that incredible atmosphere but Jerusalem as I grew was an amazing city because you see you hear today of intolerance, you hear of people killing each other because they belong to the wrong religion. I grew up in a class where 20% of the students were Muslim, 5% were Armenian, but we never thought of each other in those terms. And the remarkable thing about Jerusalem when I grew up was there was this cohesion, there was no sense of the other, it was quite a remarkable experience actually. And I don't know if any of you know the story or any of you have been to Jerusalem, I encourage you to go and to see. One of the most important accounts of Jerusalem and its history and why we lived that reality of peace and lack of hatred towards each other was one of the holiest shrines in the old city of Jerusalem, Christian shrines is the church of the Holy Sepulcher. You all know about it or any of you know, it is where legend has it our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. It's a very holy place and when Saladin entered Jerusalem with his commandant, one of them was Omar Al-Khatab and he was visiting the church and it was prayer time and the ones who were with him, they said Omar kneel and pray and with his wisdom said no and he refused to pray and he, forgive me, he left the church and 500 meters down the road he knelt and prayed in the building and Omar at Mosque. Now the beauty of the story, it has remained the story in the culture of the people and hilariously as you might know there are so many Christian communities who all want to share in the Holy Sepulcher and till now there are fights about it if you watch about Easter time and till now not the secret Christian congregation you'll be surprised to know Scott is entitled to have the key to the church because they will beat each other up. So the only solution was an old Jerusalem family, Muslim family, the Nusimus have got the key and said Omar is there every year at Easter, he comes with the key and they open. So the point I'm saying about this, I grew up in a sense of tolerance and we had a sense of deep acceptance of the other despite our displacement, despite the anger that people felt our parents' generation about the loss of an occupation of Palestine. But the way we thought was redressed, we thought was through law, through international law, there was a great love and respect for international institution and I think it's also a generational thing because this deep respect for international institutions, the United Nations as the resolver of all crisis. So as I grew up in the old city one of the things to speak of Nuremberg was that great film, I'm sure you must have seen it, the black and white movie about Nuremberg trials, my uncle took me and he haunted me that despite the power and the fascism of the Nazis, the horrors that they inflicted, the Holocaust and so on, yet they were put on trial, they were tried and that was something that had a deep effect on me. So from the old city at the tender age of 16, I come to London on my own, I go to boarding school and I begin to discover that I hated the school and I tell you why because I came from a family of foodies and Sunday lunch was an amazing experience, I had seven aunts and we ate beyond life and so you come to a boarding school in England, in those days, now you have a choice, you can eat everything you like in London, you can virtually eat everything from Albanian to Zimbabwe and back, every variety is catered for including gluten free, you name it, you have it. But in those days, you had rubbish, you had cauliflower which was so over stewed, the neighbours would have shut their noses, it was just inedible. So I remember in those days writing, there was no other means to say to my father, I cannot survive in these conditions, take me back and so I looked at the list of things, as Scott said, I came here to study aeronautical engineering as a child, I used to build aeroplanes with mechanosets, I had a fantasy to be an air, you know, first a pilot, no way, short sighted, flat footed if it's not going to happen. So I thought okay, I'll build bloody things so I then I realised I was good in geometry and algebra but I wasn't very good on physics so when I came here they said oh no no, it's a must mate, so I thought what can I do, I hate the food, what can I do A-levels in one year? In those days you could, nowadays you need four A-levels with sixteen A's but in those days you could get in and you know, I said what can I do? So I thought okay, I'll do history, Arabic which was the doddle and French which was the doddle. So a career change really came because I hated the food, I wasn't up to doing physics and then thirdly I discovered as Scott said this wonderful thing called Speaker's Corner. Now as any of you would have known, you are the internet generation, I came from Jerusalem, we had no TV, you know I came here, the first TV was a black and white flickering and we students as you would imagine fought on each channel to watch but so I had no knowledge of the other world except what I had read in books, I was an avid reader of books, I would go to the British Council and I would read books so London was not foreign to me in the sense I had played Monopoly, does anybody play Monopoly here? So for me you know Bond Street and Whitechap, this was something I already knew about and so I grew up in that kind of and I had heard about all this, the greatness about the guys, the parliament, the power of parliament, so I had read about it but I had never of course experienced it and so I thought I'm going to go and experience a bit of London, I was very thin, I was so thin, I was so shy, if you said to me boo three times believe me I collapsed and my friends who knew me from school would say who the hell is this guy now talking and so I had very big glasses and but seriously slim thin, I mean thin thin so I went, I took, there was a bus called the 137 bus, my school was in a place called Streatham and the bus took me to Speaker's Corner to Hyde Park and for me I'd heard so much about it, this is the place where it gets anything alike, no restriction, you know I grew up, I don't know if any of you remember your great grandparents having radios which looked like TV sets, my grandfather had a radio set called Telefoncat which was honestly like one of those big television sets and yeah it was flickering lights and so on and you know he had to listen so that the intelligence services don't listen to him, so anyway I come here to the land because hey we've got this amazing place, people on standing, shouting, screaming, talking in anything they like attacking, criticizing, amazing experience for your boy, never never and who's very shy was so shy didn't take part in any school play, I just that was how shy I was and if you know Marvel Arch do you all know Marvel Arch, where Marvel Arch is now there's McDonald's right but before McDonald's there used to be great teahouse called the Joe Lyons Teahouse, this boy never spoke in his life, never said booty or goose, crossed the road to Joe Lyons Teahouse and picked up a milk crate because in the old days the milk came in bottles, not in cartons, I picked up two crates, dragged them along, came up to the speakers because they were and they were great speakers not like now, they were really people like Lord Sauper and the really bad people were from the House of Lords that would come and speak, I don't know what motivated me, I just jumped on these two boxes and my voice came and started speaking needlessly, needless to say about what I perceived by the wrongs afflicting the Palestinian people and I discovered not only that I could speak but my god that I said was a people following and then there is a creature, creatures in speakers called the hecklers, you know what hecklers are so as you are speaking in full say listen to you, say hey Mike have you seen your bow tie, it's got flies on it, they're just to distract you so you had to be sharp, you had to be weak, quick to make a joke so that you are getting the crowds to laugh at him not at you and they would come sometimes in twos so I discovered the age of 16 and a half that my god I can not only cannot speak I can also handle the hecklers and make the crowds laugh at the hecklers and I was the only guy Middle Eastern Arab who spoke because of all very English, it was a very English spot and obviously they're completely mad religious nots believing fire and health so I came in with a new message and I remember I got my first kiss ever when I said this is the true story, I don't know it's being recorded but it's the truth so halleluia, I took the 137 bus back to Stratum and it passed by King's College Hospital and there was a nurse training and she said I like your hair moi? I know so I got my first I think his peck peck life to be precise as lawyers and so I went back to the school excited I spoke and because I've got a girlfriend I know so anyway so then as Scott said I began to study and I discovered that during that year the second occupation of Jerusalem took place and imagine the impact on a boy of 17 in his hand it completely shook me because now Jerusalem I grew up with that was effectively my solace my home my family I just couldn't go back and so my sense of injustice found its way back again to her to speak at school and so it was an interesting development actually so all my energies went back to this platform and my technique of speaking of debating and listening to the other were honoured in this amazing place and I can't encourage you to go now because sadly I have to say it's not of the same standard that it used to be there but still the concept of debating is so powerful and so I developed this what I would like to think as an art form of releasing one's sense of seeking justice by engaging with the other and say well why do you say that and so on so my my career as a lawyer is not like you do it school filling aca forms the statement hoping you'll get in quadruple a level interviews at Oxford and so on and why do you want to study law oh I've always wanted to do law because I believe in justice I didn't do that I I did not do that you know all this rehearsed I know families pay a lot of money to train the children what to say it's all rubbish because I interviewed people through it so sorry to save your parents money but anyway so so what I wanted to do more than anything else was I discovered because of the war and the occupation I wanted to work and so this boy who had never sort of really worked suddenly worked and went to lesson square there was a chain of restaurants called the golden egg and their menu was shaped like an egg yolk I went in I mean things were easy in those days so I said I want to work yeah all right have you worked before now all right so I started working and I loved it in the sense that I was earning some money and you know how you pocket money that pocket money was you know like four quid a week wow you know and but by sheer chance a a a BBC producer came in with his children to the golden egg and then he said to me from BBC Arabic he said you're excellent are you an Arab said yes said have you ever spoken on radio you're crazy no come he said I want to do a voice that's with you tomorrow now you have to understand in these days people will worry because you're saying you know what is he doing is he's even fiddled with my left tongue or something like that so I went I went to BBC they liked my voice and I started doing broadcast that's not true but I started doing two minutes a week but my George that's gave you the sense of I could tell people I'm on BBC which was only two minutes I would read the line like saying I was doing science fiction plays and saying whatever it is some some crazily name spacecraft has landed you know and they would have to do 20 takes because I'll start giggling because so and I'll try to improvise like I now do it's it's a it's a disease I've always had it and so that gave me an it kind of my voice slightly wider audience as I was working in that field and the BBC I obviously started and continued to work to study part-time and I joined London University as an external student to read for the LLB and I of course as you would imagine we're working begin to discover London I wasn't very assidious in my studies I'm not saying that's a good example I'm simply saying that by doing what I did hilariously I managed to bridge the academic gap which you do not need to go through because can you imagine studying law subject hard subjects like equity without having a tutor to help you I mean you know that for me is like torture I mean I still so that one of the other reasons I chose criminal law not only because I felt this powerful need to help others but because the idea of these cases Regulbynchian one if any of you are doing equity Regulbynchian one two three I mean you'll drive me insane constructive trust what is constructive trust I know I know it it was beyond me so I studied hard and I managed gradually and I mean gradually very gradually because I was enjoying London to study and to work and to read a lot I was then offered a chance to go next door I became a first year student at university college without acaforms one of my contacts liked what I offered so I ended up in university college luck unfortunately for me but unfortunately for university college I opted out because I was too involved in politics student politics and also began to be involved in writing so to cut the very long story short I finally got my degree externally how by some miracle my mother used to pray a lot and candles being lit and and so I passed my but one of the turning points of my life in this university in this college here was a professor I'm sure Kevin was a professor be changed professor of air space law and that was that subject had a grip on my imagination because when I was that age the big issues of our time was landing on the moon if country A then we always put the question if country's rocket lands on the moon and spacecraft lands and he comes out to whom does the moon belong he must have had similar kind of plans but that fascinated me said yes I can do that because that's gonna suit him and the other one was hijacking because of course I'm a Palestinian so I understood hijacking so and I was right in the law exam which I managed to get the first in was of course questions on hijacking and the moon so hey this is double you know and again that is hijacking which was always what the question was so having finished my my my law degree externally with a bit of help from the almighty on my mother's prayers I took a gap here and then I worked at an embassy and then I qualified for the bar by studying for the bar exam I found that very difficult because I did not have the same kind of academic rigors that you have but I finally did it and then I was called to the bar do you have you heard the expression called to the bar now you know it I was being called to the bar so of course in those days we had no other means of communication with with Jerusalem except by telegram so I said to my late father bless him at long last it was your son to be called to the bar right so of course at home the postman doesn't only deliver he reads right because his English is not existent but so he goes to my father and he says in my brook which means congratulations my brook he says to my father mr George my brook he says I see your son has become a barman but he says but he says a degree is still a degree but hey it's a degree from run there so um so I became a barman and um at the middle temple which was a major experience and they put the wig on you and it's quite a moving experience and the amazing thing I have to tell you is the moment I started practice even as a young pupil because you are allowed to practice I don't know if any of you know but your first six you are just following shadowing your pupil master of mystics the second six they release you and you can say the instant I was on my feet a because I was older than my contemporaries by age and also because I've had that amazing baptism of fire for years at speaker's corner the court did not threaten me so whereas most of my contemporaries were 24 25 if they just said look here mr smith mr smith will go like this he said to mr massie I said yes so that experience actually gave me courage so what I would say to you if any of you are planning to become baristers also listen for that matter if you want to practice here or elsewhere do engage in debating societies do get involved in debating even if you don't have one form a debate in society and debate within the rules if you need me to come with set it up for you but really it's very vital that you get engaged in powerful debate because what that does it sharpens your mind trains you for the future and gives you an ability to listen and to answer back it's the most powerful that I'm sure uh professor he will like she's nodding in agreement I always like others especially on the jury so I got my jury here so I I would like you to to do that because it's one of the most powerful tools for putting into practice that which you have learned so I began practicing in a very powerful set of chambers I began I was a pupil to the late George Kayatt and he was very generous in every sense and then I got to know another person who passed away the late professor Eugene Cotran who has got very deep links with this university with so has a Palestinian like me from Jerusalem an amazing man and I was a pupil in in his chambers and I learned so much from him I was a pupil to a man called uh Harindra de Silva and his namesake um so Desmond de Silva who's now a QC and so I grew up in that atmosphere where you learned by absorption and I'm sure I'm sure you all know but the rules of how you become a barrister you have to eat those dinners and you know do you know about them or would you like to hear about them you know okay so I had to eat those dinners and then I discovered whilst eating dinners that I would like to do more criminal work so I began practicing at the criminal bar and it's so funny it's funny it's really it's like I remember my very first case and it was a miracle because a person I'm sure you must have heard of called Baroness Helena Kennedy QC she's a very powerful figure she's a writer on women's rights a great fighter for human rights I did not know her but because I was speaking at the student's union debate you heard me I had long hair in those days Afro style and she said to her clock I cannot do this case but I don't know his full name he has a strange accent he has long hair with a beard track him down I want him to do this case at the Old Bailey so my very first case was at the Old Bailey which is pure luck and it's good I've gone badly wrong because you know back to the speaker's corner so the Old Bailey had no so I did my first case which was a return from my dear friend Helena Kennedy who became friends afterwards and needless to say as Scott would say I won the case and of course it started me again on this career of criminal defense and I stayed virtually at the Old Bailey virtually for the last for the next 30 years I did not leave it I was lucky but I fought hard and I if I say I enjoyed it I really did enjoy it it was the most incredible experience of life it's an experience which is unparalleled because the illegal system doesn't have codification it's difficult to understand its rules but by George the the system works in practice I've been into many countries I've spoken in many countries I've practiced in two countries other than England three countries I cannot think of any other country where you're right as as well protectives as there are in England that's what my personal experience which is quite vast and and English law protects it because of these traditions which go back centuries old so I began looking at how English law works in practice and therefore my defense as Scott was kind enough to say of these extremely impossible cases began because I began to feel a sense that people who apparently have no defense have the right to be defended and I was a young junior in those big cases that Scott mentioned I was not obviously doing the leading advocacy but I was what we call the junior being led by a qc and so that was a powerful experience I was privileged to have been involved in some of the biggest cases this last 30 years I mean you named the case and I was either a junior or I was a leader in the case from the Hindawit trial who tried to blow up Del Al playing with his pregnant girlfriend on board to every terrorist case you can think of I've been involved with and and every quadruple murder which will make storytellers salivator first of all they all offer me all sorts of stories but what I've learned from that experience actually and I'm gonna throw this debate at you one of the few things I've learned as a young lawyer I was obviously very excited to be there were not many people of Arab origin at the bar was one other so I was very proud would go around people so what do you do oh I'm a barrister I was so proud you know excited about it because the one thing you learn as you become lawyers yourself and if you're a doctor or a lawyer you must never say to a lay audience oh I'm a lawyer because or a doctor because people immediately say if you're a doctor I've got pain in my stomach you're having a glass of wine you're out of your brain and they want advice about your stomach and equally if you're a lawyer they come and say oh listen I've got a problem listen can you not see I'm you know it's my fourth glass now and they and one such story which is a true story this lady descends upon me at the cocktail party and she's oh I hear a lawyer because I beamed you know I said because now I never say I say I'm a painter a hairdresser or whatever no no I do because otherwise you get inundated she said I want to divorce my husband I said well I don't do divorce I'm a criminal I said no no no I must I said please no she wouldn't go she said finally if I kill him will you get me off you know how do you answer it because if you say no please you are in computer if you say yes you're encouraging her so I said you know something about the weather in Japan or something that's it so um it's it's it's a fascinating field the study of of criminal law and the practice criminal law so those cases that Scott mentioned that I will mention some of them what I came out of it is for you to appreciate and this is what how I began I've defended some students at universities who have been charged with serious terrorist offenses because they were misled and they joined as you know and it is one of the dangers of our society and my my strong message to you is stay away from anything that even nears anything close to or might be interpreted as violence or support of violence because firstly it is wrong in law firstly it is counterproductive and thirdly it defeats everything I prefer to engage engage and engage and I I've learned my best lesson not from court only but one from the greatest figures of our time Nelson Mandela who spent so many years he was a fellow lawyer like us he was in Robin Island and when he came out of prison did he start with his people taking revenge did they burn white people's houses did they burn africana houses did they what did he do what did he do he with Desmond Tutu set up the peace and reconciliation commission and they set it up so people can unleash their their hurt but they restart reconstructive purposes I'm certainly no rugby player because there's a story about that why not but I don't know if any of you watched the rugby world cup when it was here or watched it on tv I mean I could not believe my eyes because the spring box which is the South African rugby team was almost worshiped by the white community in South Africa and to see a team composed of black players and white players and the crowds cheering both the black and the white players for me was earth earth moving it was just amazing and for me this is a symbol for the future we should learn from how Nelson Mandela behaved how he created that commission how he created an area of future hope so you don't live in the past carrying grudges and anger and I would like to say that the message of Nelson Mandela that he carried in that I would like through me to pass on to you as something palpable that you can yourself when you are going through your daily routine remind yourselves we are surrounded by wars we are surrounded by acts of atrocities we are surrounded by acts of inhumanity if you look at the bombings in Syria if you look at anywhere in the world there are so many major crimes against humanity the question that I always ask myself having been part of the process what is the best way of dealing with people like that is it the Mandela way or is it putting people on trial is it there must be a way to find some sort of dialogue because if we end the violence and the causes of violence by dialogue in my judgment we are closer to reaching a form of modus bevending with our fellow neighbors now let me tell you about my work at the old Bailey and of course the major structures which make me a fighter for this one of the major areas that I have found very impressive is trial by jury and one of the reasons that English criminal system works because not only do they preach it it works I'm sure some of you are doing criminal law at undergrads or postgrads but one of the fundamental principles is the presumption of innocence how does it work in practice you see I have seen it work in practice it begins when the person is arrested by the police his the rights of the person when the police arrest him what rights does he or she have and so all this comes in to the process of how do you build a society based on the rule of law how do you ensure the due process and I think criminal law is my judgment the best vehicle for ensuring in practice the rule of law and justice because any other form simply does not deliver that amount of I mean which case for example you have in many of the cases I have had to look at and defend it in the evidence looks almost unanswerable unanswerable and yet by looking at the case thoroughly you will be able to reach the conclusion other than the prosecution wants you to look at invariably again every dinner party I go to invariably I can assure you invariably and maybe some of you will have the same question well how can you they say to me how can you defend somebody and win the case and feel proud of it when you know he or she's guilty every time I get asked that question it's like you know and of course the answer to that is that do you do you does anybody know the answer to that no no takers no takers okay no takers at all not even one attempt no not even one little hand come on guys you're in laws of the future how can my right to be protected if somebody like that if there are if their rights are protected well that's absolutely that's a question of principle I agree but if you look it from a practical point of view is that sometimes the prosecution forced the defense in a line of thinking that forces you to think he or she is guilty where you come in as the defense advocate is to look at the evidence and to simply look at it as it does it stand up I did the case where was young lawyer at the crown court called nice bridge as you can see I'm short-sighted in fact I'm very short-sighted and I used to wear much heavier glasses so it's like a movie the story I'm sure it's true I'm cross examining this lady who could swear blind she saw my my client she described him with accuracy right that he did the killing okay at the distance as I was cross examining I noticed and anybody who wears glasses not these new cool ones but the old ones were very heavy and they would leave implants here and as I looked at her across the witness box it's called I noticed it's like a movie but it's true I noticed these deep implants Kevin on her nose and she she was wearing glasses out of vanity so I said excuse me madam you are glasses she said what's to do with you mate you are glasses she said I'm telling you looked at the judge asking for help what's to do with you I said madam for the third time you are glasses she said what's to do with you mate she got very angry I could see her she's getting rattled by now she looked at the judge for help the judge said oh just answer mr man he's bored with me or something so I went for the jugular because I knew she was wearing it was night I don't put you the whole details the point is everybody thought her evidence was untouched because on paper she had given absolutely impeccable evidence that she described him to E.T. but we when she came to court the glassy she it was the isn't took place at night nobody not even I wears these glasses at night and so the whole case unraveled client acquitted in two seconds flat case dropped and that shows you that you have to look at the evidence and the whole point of studying law and evidence is to make sure that if you are defending something that the evidence exists in support of the prosecution's case and one one of the things that I sorry one one of the things that I would like to add to you is the question about the the role of in our justice system of the lawyer in making sure that those who are least likely to be presented in our days terrorism and those who are accused of sexual offenses I mean nowadays sadly to be accused of sexual offenses has almost become like an impossible task to defend because there's an immediate stigma I mean look at the Cliff Richard story immediately the whole media has already sentenced him before he was even a dropped the case against him so there is a role for good laws to take up cases which look unpopular so I for my part would like to I had wanted to discuss with you if I may if anybody's interested because I've written something about the legal aspects of Brexit but maybe you've had it up to your ears from your tutors but I there's an aspect of Brexit which nobody discusses and I think it touches upon the constitutionality and touches upon effectively what we are talking about here the freedom of the individual one of the greatest advantages England has is the supremacy of parliament and people who do not appreciate that many years back big conservative politicians used to derive those who voted the referendum describing it as a fascist exercise describing it as a Franco fascism because you know it's a populist thing whereas in England we have as you know parliamentary democracy so that you elect your your your MP your MP votes accordingly and this government has this insane fear of going back to parliament to decide on article 50 have any of you read article 50 do you know what is article 50 what am I talking Greek I'm talking Greek I just say two sentences article 50 enables any country which is part of the EU it's if that country seeks to withdraw to to to start the negotiations in order to start the negotiations it says in black and white that country must comply with its own constitutional position seems to be England is clear its own constitutional position I would argue must require the government to go back to parliament and seek parliamentary approval that's short but uh and the government is seeking to rely on the royal prerogative which in my judgment I think currently would be completely unconstitutional because it simply will defeat it and the major argument against that is that by royal prerogative you cannot deprive a citizen of the right he or she already has all citizens of the UK have the right because of the EU and the legislation 72 to vote in parliament the european parliament they have the right to live in europe they have the right to petition the court these are false for you to debate amongst yourselves should you wish to do so at another time so we come to uh in some of the cases I have done and perhaps we should leave that for question time Neil uh Scott if you'd like should we do that I think should we do that so I I would like if I may to finish on a perhaps more positive note and remind you of the power of the jury in England and if you have never read it please by all means please please please do try to read it's online the case of William Penn which was a case an amazing case because it was a case where two Quakers were charged with disturbance and they were brought to trial at the old Bailey and the judge effectively directed the jury to find them guilty effectively I'm sorry myself and the jury at the end of the day it's a long story but refused to find them guilty and he imprisoned the jury and I mean it's a fantastic story and one juror called Busham effectively he I think he imprisoned for two nights without water and without bread you can get the details it's a fascinating case and then the court quashed and directed that a jury is entitled to return a verdict according to its own conscience so the jury process in England has a lot of history in it it has a lot of power a lot of independence again I would urge you if you have time those of you who study constitutional law and criminal to read the case of Clyde Ponting the civil servant who gave information and was acquitted by the jury of breaching all sorts of official secrets act so finally I would want to thank again first of all all of you here to be here tonight on an evening when I feel you'd rather go out having a drink or two with your mates and have a laugh I hope I have managed to captivate some of your imagination and to direct you to say the study of law is actually quite an important function not only as a lawyer but you know law graduates and lawyers when they study law can become great negotiators you can become great politicians great diplomats because it teaches you the the discipline so thank you for coming here thank you so as for inviting me thank you Scott thank you Catherine Jenkins for suggesting my name and I'm deeply touched and humbled that I've been here today and thank you all for being here thank you well thank you Michelle what Michelle didn't mention but which anyone here understands the way this system knows that we have a divided bar right so Barrister's take instructions and we instructed this barrister to inspire and I'm pleased to say that he more than fulfilled his instructions and I I hope you're all will all join me in thanking Michelle for taking the time to come talk to us now what I thought we would do now is I would put a few questions to both Michelle and Kevin when I when I first asked Michelle about the possibility of speaking here we talked about titles and topics and I came up with an alternative title in defense of criminal defense because it seems to me we we are now in an age an age which I like to call the age of counter-terror rather than the age of terror in which criminal defense is out of fashion and out of favor so I thought that that criminal defense itself needs a criminal barrister and I would like both gentlemen here to address the special value and significance and the challenges of defending terrorism cases in this moment of counter-terror when many of us are as concerned by the draconian response of states to terrorism as we are by the underlying phenomenon itself so that's question one right what is the special value and significance of the defense of terror cases at this particular juncture and since both of you have experience of the national and international criminal context my my my second question is how do you see the difference between them I I I mentioned to Kevin the other day the irony that many of our students come here full of enthusiasm for international criminal law but what gets them fired up is not inter international criminal defense but international criminal prosecution whereas when they do the domestic criminal law cases of course many of our students gravitate toward defense so when is that anomaly what's the difference between the defense say of war criminals and those accused of crimes against humanity on the one hand in an international context and the defense of those accused of terrorism and related offenses right so those are my my my two questions and let me hand those over to you you can answer them in any order you please okay thanks it's a great pleasure to be here and it's such an honor to stare at the stage with such an engaging speaker and such a um a lawyer of such an incredible reputation I find it kind of wonderfully ironic that a a nice Palestinian boy from Jerusalem and a nice Jewish boy from Boulder Colorado both end up on the stage talking about international and a Catholic Palestinian um I want to turn more to to more to the second the second question about this the the asymmetry or the difference between national and international criminal defense work as I started as a as an American criminal defense attorney doing domestic criminal law and now I do almost exclusively international criminal law and I can kind of lump terrorism in there that there really is a fundamental difference in the way that defense attorneys are perceived conservatives don't like defense attorneys of any stripe because they see them as just interposing themselves between justice and you know and defending impunity um more progressive types as you said when they talk about domestic criminal defense there's this idea that you know the right to a defense and the individual versus the state and the defense attorney is is the only person that stands between that individual and the machinery of the state and there tends to be a great respect for criminal defense even and I know I'm speaking more about the American experience I think that even extends to terrorism cases where my progressive friends you know they hate Guantanamo Bay they hate the military commissions which are just a a farce of justice they respect the lawyers who fly down to Guantanamo Bay and defend the 9 11 conspirators those very same people are completely on the other side of the fence when it comes to international criminal law all of a sudden when you're defending an individual accused of a war crime or a crime against humanity or god forbid an act of genocide all of a sudden you're doing the devil's work and not the angel's work anymore and I don't quite know what the difference is why there that when it comes to the international community they see that as some kind of untrammeled good that is being frustrated by the defense whereas when they look at an individual nation state they see the evils of government power and I think defense attorneys and I think there's something characterologically different about defense attorneys we don't make those kinds of distinctions we see individuals who are faced with some kind of powerful machinery where their life or their liberty is at stake and and we insist that they get a defense and I think it's very frustrating to see the demonization of defense attorneys particularly at the international level and and a really good friend of mine is a man named Korean Khan who's also a QC and I'm sure that Michelle knows well one of the most esteemed international criminal defense attorneys in the world he's represented Kenyatta the president of Kenya he's the only defense attorney that I've ever actually heard prosecutors say that they're afraid of in court he's an amazing lawyer and very recently he was recommended by a United Nations subcommittee to be the special rapporteur for torture which they're now what they've just appointed the subcommittee recommended five people for various different types of special rapporteurships four of them were approved by the secretary general without a second thought and Korean Khan was immediately the target of a coalition of NGOs who argued to the United Nations how could you appoint a defense attorney to be the special rapporteur for torture you know clearly if he's defended people like Kenyatta he he can't possibly represent victims and putting aside the fact that he was a prosecutor that he represented victims in Cambodia the idea that by upholding the rights of a defendant at an international tribunal somehow that makes you inherently opposed to the rights of victims and and to compensation for victims I found literally perverse and he was the only one passed over and it's it's not an easy environment to function and I'll end because I'm I want to hear what he has to say with a personal anecdote which is when I agreed to represent Radovan Cardich which was just a few weeks after he was arrested I mean it wasn't a hard decision for me because I would defend anybody but it was not one without costs I lost friends among human rights attorneys I got death threats fairly regularly on the phone and an email and I'm sure every defense attorney who does that kind of work gets those eventually I was my front my my full color photo of me was plastered on the Sarajevo Times front page I don't know why my picture was there and not Cardich but yeah exactly because I'm handsome that's distinguished um you know and it was again a fairly trying experience but I want to end also on an optimistic note which is the single best compliment that I've ever received and it's a pretty low bar but it was still a pretty significant compliment was a young Bosniac man Bosnian Muslim whose family had suffered terribly during the war in the Balkans at the hands of the Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs I had met him a couple of times in the hay because he was interning at the ICC and you know I had blogged about my death threats and all my friends that I had lost and he sent me an email and he said very simply Kevin I am so glad to know that you are defending Radovan Cardich because when he's convicted and I'm absolutely convinced that he will be convicted I'll know that he's received a fair trial because you were involved in the case and that's really the only thing that a defense attorney could ever possibly ask is that level of understanding we are not our clients we do not adopt their agendas and their worldviews we uphold their rights in a situation in which they are most often threatened and so the fact that someone who had suffered so grievously could understand that we were all part of the same system and also integral to the functioning of the system that was really makes all the other death threats and the loss of friends completely worthwhile well thank you Kevin for that tour de force as an answer I think that's completely right because unfortunately there is a misunderstanding about the role of the lawyer because when I lecture say the Middle East as I do there is a kind of um like a box effect if I defend whoever they automatically think that I him or her we are hey listen mate I and president whatever his name is nothing you know I drink wine I play chess and I swim on Thursdays nothing with him mate I mean it's just that and in fact if you look at I'm not going to mention the big international trial where they hanged somebody he was he was defended by his very close mates and that is the worst thing you can do a doctor will never treat his own child because you are too emotionally involved if I'm going to defend somebody with whom I'm politically close I'm going to lose the case because if you are defending somebody and answering your question very powerful question if I may say it is you need to have that distance so you can say to the client this is a lot of rubbish mate I mean the cases I have won if you like I mean the case where I've come in and said but your story excuse my Greek is a cock and bull story so come on I tell me and you push a good lawyer takes a client's account and pushes and if it finally the client says I've done it mate so okay then you plead guilty give him a you get him a reduced sentence but it is not the case that you go to your client and say alright now let's see what we can do it doesn't work like that and so there's a misconception about the role of the defense lawyer and that misconception it is so negative because it really blurs the image as you rightly said Kevin the role of the lawyer is to present a case on behalf of a client I always give the case always do the case I always do this trick it's like a party trick I don't want to do it here turn up I put my watch here close my eyes pretend it's in his pocket and the camera shows him in there but there are many reasons why it could have ended in your pocket it could have stolen it could give it as a gift what's the reason that people immediately assume immediately want to assume that the defense lawyer is somehow on this no he isn't the defense lawyer is simply the advocate it's from the Latin advocate he's speaking on behalf of just that god give me if you like an ability to present an argument perhaps sometimes that's sometimes not attractive because sometimes you have a jury looks at you say what's he on about my only ability is I can tell from a jury that I'm on the wrong track and I change tack but you know that's our only art isn't it what would you say yeah I completely agree but could I add one thing I do find very interesting reflecting on my experience as a domestic and an international criminal lawyer is because of the of the magnitude of the international crimes you expect I'd be very curious to hear thoughts on this you would expect them to be monsters you would expect them to to radiate evil and only one time in my entire career did I ever sit across from someone who I said to myself wow this is a scary dude this is someone I really don't want to meet in a dark alley and it was not an international criminal brought up on card it was perfectly friendly and we discussed which was our favorite money python movie the first time that I sat down with him the only defendant I ever sat across from who scared the hell out of me was a man named chug knight who was the founder of death row records and I wrote some of his appeal and I had to go visit him in prison in Los Angeles and he was the only person that I ever said to myself this person is evil and again maybe it has something to do with it international crimes are much more about ideology than passion but it's a very counterintuitive world international criminal defense and is really I think fundamentally different than domestic criminal defense it is definitely firstly the tribunal first is is the tribunal is judges whereas in the certainly in the UK is the jury is a different approach but I just want to finish this on the point that you were saying earlier I think with the international criminal order because the some of the atrocities are so incredible I mean the horrors of it are so if you look at Cambodia just away from the current crisis Cambodia means it's unbelievable I mean you know but yet somebody has to prosecute somebody has to defend because you either believe in the concept of due process or you don't believe in the process because if you don't believe in due process it means I suspect you now of whatever it is and I shoot you I mean so why have trials so I the answer to that question Scott always is to remind the person to ask the question is would you rather live in a society where persons are guaranteed by right due process or do you live in a jungle or I say I think I saw you I mean I did I was going to talk about it baby I was going to talk about one of the first honor killing cases in the UK where a Kurdish family had killed they said prosecution the young 50 year old daughter for honor killing for honor reasons now the point about this I'm trying to say it relates to this thing here it comes to this point is that in the mind of the person who does this act at that moment when they did it all sorts of images come to their mind you see and it answers your question is you have to take the client's instructions because if you don't then like he did the killing of his daughter then he should be killed immediately without due process because he never gave his daughter allegedly the chance to to explain herself he just killed her and so you are applying the same law which is a very base and wrong law because you're going to shoot the wrong person you know the ironic thing of course is that not too long ago criminal defense lawyers defended only in a national context because that was the only context available right so the international arena is a relatively new one and leaving apart 1946 so in returning to the conventional domestic arena let me ask you is defense harder now than it was in the current climate much I can speak with much much more difficult I mean it has always been difficult there was a period on the bingham law justice bingham the law chief justice before the laws he was I think epitomizes to me what the fair rules of justice was if you read any of his judgments he was an amazing man I mean bingham he died sadly too he really understood the rules of fair play and he actually applied them in practice I mean just any of you who are studying law read the case of Mullins I mean an amazing judgment if there ever was one on on due process on due process he stopped trials he was quite a powerful champion of that so in answer to your question there is now a clock going backward a bit because there are restrictions on legal aid I mean when I started somebody charged with murder will automatically get a qc automatically I mean you didn't even ask if you consider outrageous if you wasn't given a qc and so now the clock has moved they're trying to you know there's a whole area of things that that needs to be looked at very carefully and I agree with you there is much more restrictions for example lawyers defence could not feel you went through the same experience in England we spend a lot of time asking for what we call unused material i material that the prosecution have amassed but have not used it in the case which the defence may think may have a little assistance and so we spend a lot of time seeking to do that so in answer to your question it is as fair as ever I think but it's likely more difficult I'll defer to his answer on that one all right now I think actually we've been speaking for long enough up here so let's turn things over to all of you and take 10 15 minutes now to entertain questions so let me ask for them in batches of three so I was just wondering whether in your opinion there is space hi down here I have bad eyes believe me it's not drama I know I'm an artist the fourth throw back right right okay thank you sorry hello thank you it was wonderful I really enjoyed it but my question is with respect to whether in your opinion there is space for an ideological narrative in the prosecutions of crimes of terror um and kind of attached to that when a client how do you navigate a client that insists on an ideological narrative being presented sorry I did answer the second the second limb with the question the second limb of the of the first question so the second yeah the second part of it is how do you handle a client that insists on an ideological narrative being represented thank you hi so I was in a seminar once and a famous barrister was basically telling that he was asked to defend Pinochet before the house of lords and his narrative goes that he thought about it and then his wife told him if you do defend Pinochet then you also get a divorce and he ended up not defending the guy and also cooperating with with the prosecution in the case do you also respect barristers actually you know turning down cases on more ground thank you I'm very interested in law as regards and criminal law with regards to developing countries and I'm a mangerian and I have a question regarding the international front and developing countries as a whole in what ways do you think criminal law has at least in its policies and recent development sought to protect the rights of criminals and and other people have been persecuted as well in developing countries especially in Africa with regards to making sure that the advocacy that's given to them and their trials are competent and what can be done to improve this if I may if I may my lord I would since you dressed up like a lord today I would like to begin with our our friend there firstly in England there is something called the caberang cruel which applies to barristers the caberang cruel which still applies which means that if a case comes to me through the solicitors within an area that I specialize in I'm not allowed to say I can't do it because I don't agree with the client and that's a very important rule to protect people for so that you know the person charged with very heinous crime it's still represented in England it's a sacrosan thing I can't comment on this specific case but if it was true that the wife threatened divorce I can tell you she could technically be found in contempt of court but that's another story no I'm just I'm just teasing of it and I think in the Pinochet case that was a fascinating case and the counter argument would have been to defend him on the basis against extradition so that was my point the first question that our lady asked here about the ideology I've defended in virtually every terrorist case in the last 30 years I defended Armenians who tried to blow up the Turkish embassy and if you read the transcripts it's fascinating every consumer nationality have defended so in the early days when I was a baby lawyer the Irish cases they would refuse to recognize the court they would not they would when the judge comes in they would not stand up they would turn their backs to the court they would not engage lawyers so as a pupil I was learning then they changed their policy then they said no we will go to people like Kevin who are fantastic advocates we shall instruct them they went to a very famous solicitor called Garrett Pierce you can google her there was a film made about her they would go to her and she would instruct in turn great barisers like Michael Mansfield my colleague and others who would defend these major trials I was a baby lawyer I there are cases where our stories I can tell but not tonight but the answer to that is you cannot in English court run an ideological defence in other words you are charged with murder say the evidence against you for the sake of argument is that your fingerprint appears on the wires of the bomb say okay but it seems you have three choices you say I don't know why the wire came from my aunt's garden I was fixing her bulb on me I was going to say but you have to give an explanation right you know I can think of many I'm not going to tell you what excuses there are but but were you ideologically you want to say yes I planned to blow up whatever it is because I believe in well you can say that but you'll get 36 years minimum and you know you'll it will be glorious but you know but I'm sorry so the simple answer that there isn't and I you cannot say to the court my client believes in the justice of whatever case he or she believes in and believes in blowing up whatever you know and it would be wrong and you as a lawyer would say to him or her terribly sorry mighty chap the evidence against you is abc what's your answer to the evidence if he or she has no answer then she'll my advice to you is to plead guilty and as every young lawyer says which never happens in real life I my client throws herself at the mercy of the court because we never do but that's in the movies certainly maybe I just I want to pick briefly up on the first question as well because I think it's different at the international level I think the room for pushing particular historical narratives is much greater and it can be very frustrating if you are a lawyer who's interested in a legal defense with a client who is not interested in a legal defense but a historical one and and we very much faced that issue in the cottage case where my colleague and I who were basically responsible for his day to day defense also had to deal with his kind of somewhat crazy Serbian lawyers and we would sit in these rooms discussing strategy and we're lawyers we're not Serbs we're not interested in a historical narrative our best defense was to point our finger at Mladic the head of the Bosnian Serb army and say he did it and he and my client hated each other because Kurdish and Mladic did hate each other that's the legal defense but that's not what the Serbian lawyers were interested in the Serbian lawyers were interested in making sure that Kurdish reinforced the basic kind of paranoid Serbian line that they were all victims that everything is being trumped up by the west and I would sit in these meetings and listen to these Serbian lawyers say we have powerful new forensic evidence that that only 400 people were murdered at Srebrenica and that all of them were were men between the ages of 18 and 35 and and you sit in there thinking to yourself a your evidence is ridiculous but b no one cares at this point that Srebrenica genocide ship has sailed and this is not the way to pursue a defense but if your client insists on basically accepting the fact that they're going to be convicted at the international level and still wanting to have their their last say to an international audience there isn't very much you can do but it's extremely frustrating can I just add I mean in the English context there was I forgot the names sadly but there was a very famous spy called Blake I can google it very famous spy Soviet spy the height of the cold war and he escaped from the top security prison helped by two sympathizers I think one of them was called Potter I mean it's a very and they wrote a book so 30 years on so he escapes he's back in the Soviet Union and hallelujah eating you know caviar and vodka and singing you know nasdrovia nasdrovia and the two guys you know now in their 60s wrote a book saying how brilliant they were bringing here you know so the police said hello hello this is a confession so they said good morning I am detective constable jimmy edwards and this is a detective chief's footprint and that's what I want so they arrested him and they put them on trial for a very serious offense and they came to their lawyers and said wow we we want to run you just remember that we want to run an ideal we you know they admitted the whole thing in the book but we we are not guilty for reasons which they gave so the law said well that's a very good but we as barrisers in qc's we cannot put forward on your behalf to the jury this cock and bull unbelievable incredible story client client said thank you very much it's very decent of you thank you bye bye so they defended themselves and they said to the jury look we are sympathizers the case is 35 years old right these guys did nothing wrong every whatever it is they defended Blake themselves each one of them and after many days and trials and evidence the jury came back and said thank you not guilty so so the the barrisers withdrew so in answer to your question the lawyer is not allowed by the rules of the profession to to put in this ideological defense it can be part of the background if you for example explain it to explain to the jury why you did something but you that could be but they they that was one of the most amazing cases in modern times I forgot that I think it was potter one of this but I'll check it Google Google Mr Google I wasn't quite sure what the specific question was I was basically asking what Nigeria what ways criminal law policies and renovations have taken to account protecting advocacy rights of criminals in developing countries for example West Africa well so developing countries within continents like Africa well I mean one could give you know a kind of a highfalutin answer which is and it's not limited to just the developing world but in any country that has experienced really societal rendering rending conflict part of the process of reconstruction is reconstructing the judiciary and reconstructing the lawyers after Rwanda there was after the Rwandan genocide in 1994 by some estimates there were no judges and less than 10 qualified lawyers left in the country so part of what happens in the wake of conflict is rebuilding the judicial system and if you don't insist on the rule of law in rebuilding a system from the start if you don't take seriously the defense function just as much as the prosecution function I don't think you can build a mature legal system and if countries like the United States are are struggling to build fair judicial systems countries that have far fewer resources than the United States you can only imagine how difficult it is and so I think part of it is insisting upon the rule of law in its robust sense not in rule of law in terms of convicting as many people of crimes as possible but insisting that you convict as many people as fairly as possible hi um I wanted to ask the man behind the the lawyer I know you partially answered the lawyer oh any anyone um I knew I knew I was not supposed to be here I completely agree that if you firmly believe in due process you can defend anyone for whatever they did and if they're freed because you've managed to convince the jury then that's completely fine but what about when you free someone on the base of a small failure in procedure for example how do you cope with that on a personal level is that for this man or the one behind me I'm just easy it's a good it's a good question it's a good question it does burn me out um thanks again both of you for sharing some some really amazing anecdotes um and as a practicing lawyer previously myself I share your views that if you have the opportunity to work in another jurisdiction it's a great experience the question it relates to the perception as reported in the media that um institutions like the ICC and so on um are perceived negatively in other countries uh and I'm just wondering if you might share your thoughts on whether or not you feel um that's fair uh or it's just a reality and if it is just a reality what can be done to improve the perception in countries like Africa and so on that you know Africans are being persecuted more than I don't know other people thank you shall I deal with the first question about sure I yeah I thank you for the question I mean as that supports my view that every dinner party I get similar questions and so even which is interesting it is a human nature to ask always this kind of almost what I call the gram green battle uh how does how do you wrestle with your conscience at night well I don't because I start with the point that every person is presumed by law innocent I actually believe that I mean if you don't believe it you must practice law okay then it is for the prosecution under our system to prove guilt 30 they must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt these are the three elements for me from a practical point of view of due process okay so you have to have that ingrained in your psyche as it is in mind because I have seen so many miscarriages of justice where people have tried to you know speed up the process or cut the corner here by the prosecution and it always ends up badly I could tell you stories I'm not gonna tell you but there have been substantial miscarriages of justice which have taken place for example when the emotions are high during the IRA campaign there was a woman who was arrested and she was charged with serious terrorist offenses she confessed to being the brains behind a whole series of bombings in London 26 years later 26 years later the court of appeal quashed all her convictions apologized to her realizing that the lady was not mentally well she should never have been arrested and the police had overlooked that and she should never have been charged and so the point I'm saying to you is if you turn the clock back the person who would have spotted how ill that lady was would have been a hero don't you think you see it's very difficult to translate that powerful question that you ask me to the realities of courtroom drama because you see when I'm faced with a case I have to say well what's the evidence say it's a murder say the fingerprint is on the knife do we have time for a story would you like to hear a story that's all of you yeah okay all right I'm going to change a little bit the story because it's too sensitive but I defended I was just becoming you see right so they gave it to me on the basis he's going to lose it I gave it to him and the evidence was I mean honestly seriously overwhelming okay these are the facts and you be the judge okay what's your name menon okay now this this is the fact this is what the police found the police come to a disused garage and they find a man stabbed to death knife had been stabbed in his heart and then they his his body was soaked in blood he was lying in a pool of blood and they found footprints of blood and hand prints on the blood like on the wall like this okay not far from the scene they find the shirt soaked in blood as well okay and two days later the arrest as it's done at my client and his fingerprints match the fingerprints on the wall his fingerprints match fingerprints on the knife and the blood of the victim is on his hair right and what the ex was called the shower effect if god forbid I was to stab Kevin the blood would go up to cover me depending on how we are positioned so there was evidence now would you say that evidence was pretty overwhelming against my client yeah yeah fingerprints on the knife the blood of the victim on his shirt and I did not tell you because I we're running at speed he had legged it for two for two days when the police arrest him he says moi are you crazy I was never there I was with my girlfriend Lolita okay I'm changing the name all right why are you going to tell you her whole full name address now so he said he gave a defence of what we call alibi okay he gave it and so of course do you all agree his defence of alibi is insane because clearly he must have been do you all agree he must have been at the scene yeah any dissenters no he was at the scene right okay so the police clearly charged with mother he has lawyers the lawyers say this and very sorry by dear chap it's a very interesting case but really you have to please guilty this is the most overwhelming case we've seen since Magna Cata and I tell you and he told and he told them to I won't use the words he used but he told them basically to okay so he sacked them he then comes to the solicitors who end up instructing me and they called me they said we have a hopeless case he refuses to plead guilty it's pretty damning he is guilty as sin but would you do us a favor look Michelle you're a baby silk you're a baby QC come on just a bit of money for you I like a challenge I'm going to see the client he is furious he is swearing he is absolutely mad so of course I look at the case I said the papers and I say Fenior because I speak so Spanish he said Fenior I'm so sorry I will not I will not do the accent I said you're guilty as sin and I say I have to plead guilty but I'll get you good deal I know the prosecutor and he said you're exactly like them I said look but you have not given me any explanation because the evidence looks like that I said look think about it if I have an explanation that explains your because you could not have been with Lolita there is no way I can whatever else you know is right um you know the pope is the king of all nostrils in the world he cannot you know I left him a week later so this is he liked you come back so go back yes he starts crying he says I like you I could say I like you too you know I said yes he said uh and of course he said uh nobody will believe me you won't believe me I said no no try me so he said and he he told this way he said I'm a drug dealer the victim is a drug dealer the day in question I came to give him some to buy my drugs from him I mean not for his personal but to sell he was a man as I came in to buy the drugs from that I Russian I heard him sounding oh like that I rushed I saw him dying with the knife in his heart so I rushed I quickly grabbed the knife pulled it out and as he was expiring almost he said to me in Spanish of course hold me okay I held him and then I heard footsteps I'm an illegal immigrant I'm a drug dealer and I'm wanted by the police in three countries so I dropped the body and I ran yes I lied I was not with Lolita I was at the scene now do you all think including you Mademoiselle that his story has some credibility now okay so you see it is fascinating don't you think Scott because when he told us a closer version closer to the truth as it happened and we analyzed that we got a forensic expert we got everybody all I will tell you is who do you think he was acquitted come on show me hands who do you think was acquitted don't be timid I can't see because of the light there's a lot of hands there's a lot of hands well I got him off he was acquitted of all the charges and coming to your question I was asked that same question don't you feel terrible he's a criminal and three years later at the old Bailey officer of the cases oh very sorry sorry I have to tell you yourself so what what we've nicked the guy what did it so in fact we acquitted the innocent man and the police and the police well but well not well it points the evidence pointed to his guilt you see the evidence Scott pointed only one way and if you take the example here it points I mean I could tell you many cases it points to guilt so you have to get the client to sufficiently trust you so he can he or she can tell you the truth and in this case he was acquitted and the police three years later told me they got the real man so it's I slept well I don't have a story but I guess I have an answer a very quick way the way that I tell the his answer is to say that you know that I don't believe that we should say defense attorneys to get defendants off I think we should say prosecutors don't get them in because it's the prosecutor's job to put them away and if anybody is supposed to feel horrible after an acquittal it should be the prosecution and not the defense because we don't have the burden but I know that sounds like a very bloodless answer and in my confession and I think actually the man to my right mis disproves this um is that you know I think there really is something characterologically different about defense attorneys the way I usually say it and this is what you disprove is that all good defense attorneys have a little touch of a sociopath in them because they're able to because they're able to to to detach themselves from the consequences of criminal behavior not all of your clients are miraculously innocent some of them are guilty and you have to be able to to say the values I'm upholding are more important than the short term consequences and that's not for everybody and it comes back to your question that you know I actually do I painfully admit this I actually do look down on defense attorneys who really pick and choose what kinds of cases they won't do in the United States it's very no defense attorney ever becomes a prosecutor in the United States but in the US prosecutors become defense attorneys but they don't become they don't defend the murders and the rapists and the terrorists they defend the tax frauds and the securities fraud you know the the good type of dependent offended you'll often hear them talk about good defendants and bad defendants and to me that's not that's you're not a criminal defense attorney if you're only willing to defend certain kinds of crime now I think all defense attorneys should get one type of crime that they won't do I the best attorneys I've ever met in my entire life who's a federal public defender in Phoenix Arizona he defend rapists he would defend murderers he would defend terrorists he would not defend people who blew up waterfalls in national parks and in Arizona people like to blow up waterfalls and he just liked nature and he liked waterfalls and he thought it was such a horrible thing to blow up a waterfall that he could not zealously defend someone so everybody gets one but the point is if you can't make that separation if you can't live with yourself if your client is the one who gets acquitted and then goes off to kill again you can't really be a defense attorney and so I'm not I don't ever tell people that everybody should become a defense attorney but I think we should all be happy that there are at least some sociopaths out there who are willing to play that role in the system we have a quick response to the question I mean it's unfortunately it's a long response you know I mean international criminal justice is completely imperfect it's completely selective but the real problem is not that innocent people are always being prosecuted sometimes they are most of them are not most of them are guilty the problem is we're not prosecuting enough guilty people it's not that Kenyatta the president of Kenya shouldn't be prosecuted the point is that George Bush and Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and Blair they should be prosecuted as well so I but I was I was totally pandering with that you know your audience but the point is and I used this in my international criminal law class last week the people who are prosecuted at tribunals they're not scapegoats scapegoats are innocent people who are being sacrificed to make a larger point they're not innocent people being sacrificed they're guilty people who unfortunately are surrounded by equally guilty people who are not being brought to justice and I'm not a huge defender of international criminal justice so if you're looking to for a hopeful end I don't really have one other than to say and I think this comes back to your question if you want to look at one thing that we can actually point to in international criminal law that gives us hope for the future it's the Habre case in Senegal you have an African country prosecuting the head of state of another African country for international crimes via universal jurisdiction if this area of law has a future it will be that kind of global south prosecution and to me not the international criminal courts international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's so we both agree that holes through which you could drive an articulated law in criminal defence on both the national and the international levels is prosecutorial discretion well I don't think any defense attorney is ever happy with the answer prosecutors will use their discretion wisely because I think evidence tends to not bear that assertion I think though it is frankly because of the cuts in England in England there is a tendency to shift onto the other person so if you've got a marginal case you say let the jury decide that's a kind of there is not enough discretion at the lower level of the criminal prosecution so say this is nonsense this case cannot go because everybody's frightened oh my god oh I stopped the case what am I doing it's terrible I think people but many many less cases should be prosecuted because they they don't pass the 50% evidential test anyway you know thank our speakers particularly that one that's a good one that's a good one we're talking to us so decently and I want to thank all of you for yeah for your attention their job is hard our job is easy