 able to welcome you all to this evening's event and to introduce tonight's speaker. The event will be chaired by my colleague, Professor Chandra Lecha Sriram, Professor of Law in the School of Law here. Now, the topic of tonight's lecture, as you already know, is Ending Impunity, the Struggle for Global Justice, which I believe you will agree with me. It's a very important topic in transitional justice, especially in current times. This evening, we are very lucky to have one of the most competent experts on the topic as our speaker tonight in person of Mr. Jeffrey Robertson QC. I will say a few words of introduction of Jeffrey, and then Chandra will say a few words before we start the lecture. Jeffrey is founder and head of Dirty Street Chambers, the UK's largest human rights practice. He has appeared in the courts of many countries as counsel in leading cases in constitutional, criminal, and international law. And he is a distinguished jurist under the UN's Justice Council. He served as the first president of the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone, where he offered landmark decisions on the illegality of recruiting child soldiers, the legal limits of amnesties, and the right of journalists to protect their sources. He was active in the prosecution of General Pinochet, the former Chilean president, and Hastings Banda, the former president of Malawi, and also in the defense of Salman Rushdie and Julian Asange. Jeffrey sits as a recorder and is master of the Middle Temple and a visiting professor of human rights at Queen Mary. He has also published widely in this subject area. Some of his publications include Crimes Against Humanity, The Struggle for Global Justice, published first by Penguin in 1998. It is in the third edition now published in 2006. Also, The Justice Game and The Case of the Pope, Vertical Accountability for Human Rights Abuses, published in 2010. I believe you agree with me that we have a competent hand today to give this talk on ending impunity, The Struggle for Global Justice. I urge you to please help me in welcoming Jeffrey Ruppers to QC with a round of applause. I will now hand over to Chandra to say a few words after which Jeffrey will give his talk, and there will be opportunity for questions and answers after the lecture. Chandra. We'll be just a very few words since Michoud has already welcomed you all on behalf of the School of Law. I want to welcome you also on behalf of the other co-sponsors of this event, the London Transitional Justice Network, which is an inter-university, interdisciplinary network that works on questions of transitional justice, chaired by a number of us here at SOAS, by colleagues in the LSE, and colleagues at the School of Advanced Studies. And I would like to note in particular that we've also had the generous support of the Human Rights Consortium of the School of Advanced Studies for this event. So again, thank you very much, Mr. Robertson, for joining us. Thank you both for that over kind introduction, kinder than I got last week in Glasgow, where the chairman with a very Glaswegian accent welcomed me as a distinguished liar. Talking tonight about ending impunity happens to be very topical tonight. This morning on the streets of Damascus, the protesters carried banners assaad to the Haag, or the Haag, or Den Haag, as they say in Den Haag. There was in Cambodia the indictment and the opening of the trial of Pol Pot's three most senior lieutenants put on trial at long last for genocide, 30 odd years after it laid waste to the killing fields of Cambodia. In Bangladesh, we started this week, the trial of a man charged with genocide from 1971, almost forgotten, a poor attack by the Pakistani armed forces, which resulted in the rape of 300,000 women and the killing of many Bangladeshis. Then, of course, we have Saif Gaddafi. Saif will be safe only in the Haag. He won't be safe, I suspect, in Tripoli. But the questions being asked today in a number of newspapers around the world is where should he be tried at the International Criminal Court in the Haag or in Tripoli? And that's an issue that is burning at the moment. We have Charles Taylor about to hear the judgment of the court in Sierra Leone, which I presided and indeed indicted him. And that is coming out any moment soon. We have Mr. Bashir, whose movements depend upon the states that are prepared to ignore the ICC indictment. So it's a very tropical subject. And how quickly has it come upon the agenda? No one in the 90s would believe that within the space of 15 years from the mid-90s, this subject would be so important, so newsworthy and so controversial. The idea, the critics of including Dr. Kissinger, who said, this will never work. This idea of international justice will take power away from diplomats. We won't be able to arrange situations where dictators leave the bloody stage with their amnesty in their back pockets and their Swiss bank account intact. Well, a lot of people think that's a rather better situation that they should leave the bloody stage without that ability, but instead facing 20, 30, 40 years in prison. And as I tried to point out this morning in the times, it really is the fate of Saif Gaddafi, whether he goes to the Hague or whether he is tried in Libya is really a question of whether he will survive, because international law allows no death penalty. Libyan law invites it, as of course do the people of Libya. So that is another aspect of the debate over international justice. I was one of those who trained the judges for the trial of Saddam Hussein, and we had a terrible battle on the British side, as it were, with the Americans, because once they'd captured Saddam, they wanted him killed, and the only way they could achieve his execution was a trial in Iraq, in front with judges who were not independent of the new Iraqi parliament. Well, we argued that Saddam should go to trial in the Hague, where of course he could not face the death penalty. This was intolerable to the Americans. They said to us, and with good reason, you can't keep him alive in Iraq. No, we said he'll probably go to Finland for the rest of his life if he's convicted. Finland will get 140 television channels, most of them showing pornography. You can't have him in Finland. So this debate was raging, and I suggested to the British foreign office that in fact we offer to put him where we put Napoleon all these years ago in St Helena, an idea which they took seriously enough to contact the St Helena authority, who replied, well, we're trying to develop a tourist industry down here. We don't think that Saddam's presence would add to it. So we did suggest the Falkland Islands as a kind of last resort where Saddam and Milosevic could commune with penguins and never be heard of again. But that's some of the dilemmas that we are facing with an international court system, which is very new, which is affecting all sorts of international relations as the cry for justice on the streets, Alasard to the Hague, becomes very, it almost creates an expectation among people on the streets that we will live up to that cry and how to live up to it is problematic. Well, how have we come to this stage? I think I can best explain it by going back a little in history and showing you the historical development, and I'll do so briefly, but it is interesting that as lawyers, international law began with the Treaty of Westphalia back in 1648 when the countries who'd fought the Thirty Years' War got together and made a treaty. And it was a treaty based on Machiavelli's ideas of the prince, namely that the prince was sovereign, all powerful, one prince couldn't try another prince, the prince could do what he liked with his own people and no one could intervene. It was the sovereignty principle, and it's found now in Article 27 of the UN Charter, the article that says one state must not interfere with the domestic politics of another state. This Article 27, which is so beloved of China and Chinese diplomats, but it's trumped is Article 27 by Chapter 7 of the Charter, which allows the Security Council to intervene if it's essential for the peace of the world to stop breaches of peace. And it's upon the Chapter 7 power that a lot of international justice has developed. But back in 1648, there was one good thing about the Treaty of Westphalia, and that is that Britain was not part of it. Britain was in fact in the process led by Cromwell. The British Parliament was in the process of ending the absolute power of the Stuart Kings and beginning or starting the first modern trial of a head of state, Charles I put on trial. Now, it was a very difficult situation for the lawyers who had to indict him because of course it was treason. Most people believed he was anointed by God and indeed the most senior lawyer who was the king's advisor told the king they could never put you on trial. That'll be contrary to Magna Carta. Magna Carta says you'll be guaranteed trial by your peers and the king has no peers. So that was the argument that he put up. But the way around it was to try him for what was called the crime of tyranny, the crime of supervising the torture of prisoners of war during the Civil War, the crime of pillage, of burning down and killing innocent civilians. What would today be called a crime against humanity? So he was put on trial and it was those proceedings shot the crowned heads of Europe. Cromwell later I think made the mistake because his conviction was not a foregone conclusion but they made the mistake of executing him making him a martyr. And 11 years later his judges, all those who had signed the death warrant and were still alive were tried themselves for treason and were taken to Charing Cross and hung, drawn and courted. They were cut down before they were died. Their bowels were cut out and burnt in front of their gobbling eyes. So that was not a good start let us say for putting heads of state on trial. One interesting factor and it's very interesting that the king said by what power do you try me? To his court and that's of course what Milosevic said and that's what Saddam said and what they all say by what power do you try me? The answer of course is that the power that has superseded you and your power but the question of whether it's illegal power is one that we've had to work out. But of course there were a number of parallels. These problems of putting heads of state on trial are not new. In 1960 when of course Charles II came back and the regicides as the judges were called were disemboweled. The first 10 of them went to their disemboweling quite courageously and there were lots more dangerous republicans still in prison. And the king was told by his attorney general that he couldn't dare try them because the people were turning in their favor against the king. What are we to do with them? We can't say the king they'll get out on habeas corpus we can't keep them in prison forever. I know said the Lord Chancellor we'll put them on offshore islands where habeas corpus doesn't run and they did and it was regarded as disgraceful even in those days because parliament when it got itself together in 1679 passed the habeas corpus act which applied to offshore islands and it is that act that was relied upon by the Supreme Court in the great cases in America which declared that habeas corpus did run to Guantanamo Bay. So there are lots of parallels and interesting historical developments but to pass over them there was the trial of Louis the 16th there was then of course Napoleon who we sent to St Helena. The great human rights convention of France and the French Revolution and the American Revolution seemed to set out principles that could be enforced rights of man the right not to be tortured the right not to be killed arbitrarily the rights right of habeas corpus you're right against the executive but of course they were heavily criticised as you know from your politics courses first by Jeremy Bentham who didn't think much of human rights they weren't called human rights of course in those days they were called natural rights rights that came from nature came from God well to Jeremy Bentham and the great English liberals they were nonsense, nonsense on stiffens because that's not how our rights were there was no natural right for Karl Marx writing on the Jewish question in 1848 these were bourgeois rights these natural rights were the rights of the wealthy to override the poor so from left and from right as it were there was no support for natural rights there was a philosophical basis for erecting any international structure there was very little done in the 19th century there was I think the first humanitarian intervention which was of course the anti-slavery movement which took the British Navy went down the coast of Africa liberating slaves, the Seychelles the Seychelles were today descendants of slaves liberated by the British Navy and I do see that as an early demand for an early example of humanitarian intervention there were the Hellenic movement Byron and Shelly fought with Castle Ray the foreign secretary over whether Britain should intervene to protect the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire I met murder on the way he had a mask like Castle Ray sent Shelly in one of his poems that what was the Byron poem? Something about posterity can never show written over Castle Ray's grave posterity can never show a greater grave than this then stop traveller and piss he really they really loathed Castle Ray who stopped intervention in the to protect the Greeks but it was eventually taken and we did intervene Gladstone of course later in the century did intervene so there are the but these interventions were not just humanitarian there was always something in it for Britain there was always some possibility of colonialism but by the end of the 19th century indeed by the beginning of the First World War there was no international law remained entirely a matter of relations between states there was no international crimes didn't exist the argument over the Kaiser for example putting the Kaiser on trial was a debate between Britain and America Britain came to Versailles with F.E. Smith the Attorney General demanding that they should put the Kaiser on an international court trial because of unrestricted submarine warfare and the aggression of the invasion of Belgium the Americans refused objected on the basis that the Kaiser was head of state he had diplomatic immunity you could not put on trial a political or military leader so the Lloyd George's demand to hang the Kaiser went for nothing the Kaiser remained unhung and lived happily ever after there was during the First World War the massacre of the Armenians that indeed in 1915 saw about 1.5 million Armenians march to their death massive death march into the desert of Syria that caused an international conference to condemn Turkey initially for crimes against Christianity but the Russians pointed out that not everyone was Christian so they scratched out Christianity and put in humanity the crime against humanity began by declaring that the authors of the Armenian genocide it wasn't called genocide then that came later of the Armenian massacres would be brought to justice well the British tried in Malta in 1918 they rounded up the young Turks who'd done this and they couldn't find the basis for trying them it was very the right of individual rulers to kill their own people was asserted and there was nothing international law that could be done about it we remember Hitler when he was urging his generals to show no mercy before the invasion of Poland infamously said who now remembers the Armenians and if it weren't for a very curious old professor who coined the name genocide and prevailed on eventually on the United Nations to pass the genocide convention in 1946 perhaps no one would but what is interesting about this period is that Bentham and Marx had really killed the idea of enforceable human rights because they had derided the idea of natural rights in between in the 19th century right until 1938 1938-39 there was no talk of human rights in by academics, by the court of justice the permanent court of justice at the League of Nations or by any European states people it was not till a very curious little group of middle class English socialists lawyers and writers got together under the chairmanship of H.G. Wells and Viscount Sankey who'd been the first Labour Lord Chancellor and as the world was sliding to war they devised a an enforceable bill of rights the idea came to them that there should be a universal treaty for the rights of man which would be enforceable against nations that killed their own people it was a remarkable document H.G. Wells, J.B. Priestley, Baroness, wouldn't A.A. Milne would motor up from Pooh Corner to add his bit to the draft and it was published as a Penguin Special in 1939 and it so massively hundreds of thousands of copies translated into 30 languages around the world the British Foreign Office was so excited by this idea they translated it into German and they dropped it on the Nazi tanks as they were going across France they didn't stop to read it of course but it went H.G. Wells had a friend in President Roosevelt and he read it and it became the it provided one of the inspirations for his four freedoms speech after Pearl Harbor we are fighting for freedom freedom of speech and religion freedom from want and fear and then of course the Atlantic Charter which elevated the battle fight for human rights Dan Plesch has done a wonderful book recently from so as I guess on the how the United Nations really emerged in rhetoric and then in reality during the war by way of agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt but of course it was at Nuremberg it was the Nuremberg Charter that first put up the idea of ending the impunity of political and military leaders and we had the trial at Nuremberg and much of the current development of international criminal justice is really delivering on the Nuremberg legacy we were very lucky to have got Nuremberg because Churchill remembering what had happened when they executed Charles I and how he'd become a martyr was frightened the Hitler it put on trial would use the doctors soapbox and would develop Nazi philosophy through it so he was totally opposed to any form of justice on the Nazi leaders he drew up a list of the top 75 Nazi leaders who were to immediately they'd be arrested they'd be given six hours to say their prayers and then they'd be shot that was the British position for Truman who's not a just guy Truman and Jackson the Supreme Court judge who's adviser this would not they said sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our grandchildren with pride we've got to give them as fair a trial as the circumstances will allow so it was a complete deadlock between the two allies Britain and America and the casting vote went of course to the third ally Joe Stalin who loved show trials as long as everyone got shot and it was his vote that in effect brought us the Nuremberg trials now Nuremberg has been said to be victor's justice it could otherwise be said that victory gave the power to do justice to those who had so appallingly brought him out of the Holocaust it was a trial which lacked certain elements as we see of fairness but the defendants were defended there was no appeal there was a death sentence but the judgment at Nuremberg served to confound Holocaust deniers down the century ever after in setting out the facts it was an extraordinary trial 23 Nazi leaders were tried three of them acquitted in a period of 12 months that's a record that I keep urging international courts to try to emulate they never do it was if you look at the old usurials I was a judge in Sierra Leone and know how with what contempt some of the defendants treat the court but it was amazing to see Goebbels who was laying the head of the defendants coming up to with a great sheaf of notes to be asked to plead guilty or not guilty and there was a very English high court judge who was in charge and he said Mr. Goebbels you must plead either guilty or not guilty and he pleaded not guilty it was collapsed literally of stout party dropped his notes and went sheepishly back to the dock so it was and the Nazi leaders extraordinarily decided to play the justice game I mean when they were first arrested Goebbels summoned them all and said look we're going to say three words to this court catch cry one of Goethe's warrior heroes literally translated kiss my arse that was what we're going to say to the judges but as time went on they got sucked in for the fairness of the proceedings and something that was noble to the Nazis and so they they cooperated and as I say some of them were acquitted but the Jackson who was the prosecutor was quite frank about it at the end he said Nuremberg succeeded because of the teutonic habit of writing everything down they had Goebbels signature on the night and fog decree that's easy I mean in Sierra Leone and other places we have to draw inferences from unmarked mass graves and massive forensic archaeology that goes on you've got to get informers where you don't have a lot of massacres you don't have a Rwanda particularly which is being tried tried at Eruca you don't have documents they didn't write down who they're going to kill you need informers you need to give witnesses special protection which generally means flying them to Europe it's not easy and it's a great mistake to think that as some people did but oh Nuremberg is this wonderful principle we can simply emulate it you can't it turned out to be a lot more difficult than that but after Nuremberg of course there came in 1948-49 based on Nuremberg transcripts and the judgement the great post-war human rights triptych you had the human universal declaration of human rights you had the genocide convention terribly important because it requires states to take action where genocide is committed and a few months later the Geneva convention this is a great human rights triptych and there was hope that these conventions particularly the genocide convention would be enforced and that we would it in a way with immunities of heads of state and that people that last the Westphalian principle although there in 27 and the charter would be trumped by the security council or by the genocide entering as a crime in international rule but of course this all went into cold storage we had 50 years of the Cold War we had lots of wonderful conventions in this period we had the convention against torture convention against apartheid conventions for children for women conventions against racism we had all the good conventions and as someone said looking at the killing fields in Rwanda the road to hell is paved with good conventions we had no you know in Rwanda how many people died 800,000, 900,000 over three months the United Nations security council did nothing and as Romeo de Lair says a few detachments of troops would have been enough to stop the massacre of Tutsis by Hutus largely but including many of the Hutu community it was appalling at the security council to see Britain and America the Clinton administration and John Mages administration pretending that it wasn't genocide you get the transcripts of the security council you see these diplomats saying oh it's the breakdown of a peace accord it's black on black violence whereas anyone who saw the hand-held camera pictures of the hacking to death knew exactly what it was it was genocide but they dared not use the G word until because that would involve a duty under the genocide convention to intervene it was something of a miracle that America actually ratified the genocide convention it ratified it Ronald Reagan ratified it in 1986 very unusual for America to ratify a human rights convention requiring action but in that case it was a a young obese protest bearded protester in Flint, Michigan read that Ronald Reagan was visiting Bitburg cemetery during a trip to Germany and but they were SS graves in Bitburg cemetery so he and a friend jumped on a plane with their banners rushed over when Reagan entered the cemetery they unfurled their banners about America pays homage to the SS and this went viral and not that there was internet in those days but it was caused enormous fury among the Jewish powerful Jewish community in America and to pacify them three weeks later Ronald Reagan ratified the genocide convention that was the most effective protest that Michael Moore has ever made but it was he behind the banner and so the genocide convention very important America ratified it and it was under the genocide convention that Colin Powell uh... finally came into the security council and asked them to do something about genocide in Darfur so there were uh... straws in the wind nothing basically happened by way of international conventions i mean international trials Pinochet got away with torture not torture that was as in most countries and eighty countries in the night in the uh... seventies and eighties were using torture only one of them was happy to admit it Pinochet actually was made no bones about the torture uh... because it would terrify uh... and destroy the uh... leftist opposition but uh... so so nothing really happened to deliver on the Nuremberg legacy despite the crimes the crimes against humanity committed uh... in this period i've mentioned the Bangladesh uh... case but there were many more until nineteen ninety four and that was really when the Balkans gone there was a i remember hearing the black joke in Sarajevo in nineteen ninety two what do you do with a man who commits murder you send him to jail for life what you do with a man who kills twenty people and put him in a mental hospital what do you do with a man who kills two hundred thousand people oh you send him to a luxury hotel in Geneva peace negotiations and it was told him the loss of it and it got blacker and blacker and to as a fiddly really i think un to uh... pretend it was doing something they set up the ICTY the tribunal to deal with ex-Yugoslavia in the Hague and of course and it played well going back to Nuremberg we're going to put people who kill their own people on trial it played so well they set up another court the next year in Rwanda uh... to deal with the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda and no one expected these courts to work if you talk to the diplomats at the time they were PR stunts they were fiddly so justice justice no we need to negotiate they all said and nothing really happened the killing stopped for a few months in the Balkans after the court was set up and then it started again because uh... no one really feared it nato said in nineteen ninety seven a resting carriage is not worth the blood of one nato soldier uh... and that was the attitude and i think it's well it's to rob and cook very much and uh... probably madeline all bright uh... who decided that nato should try to arrest a few concentration camp comedants and a few generals and so forth and slowly at the end of by in nineteen ninety nine it actually and of course there was the other great event the turn of the century and it was the arrest of general pinnish he had come to london uh... to take tea with mrs thatcher he regularly did it was really whiskey but uh... i'm told but uh... he was uh... arrested on a warrant from a very courageous Spanish magistrate who had charged him with crimes against humanity based on the torture convention one of the good conventions that had been signed by diplomats and signed by general pinnish and mrs thatcher uh... neither of them thought it would ever cause their own arrest and miraculously scottler jarred arrested him kept under house arrest mansion arrest at least for eighteen months people like it was amazing to as i was acting for human rights watch in this case and it was fascinating to see all the people who put pressure on jack straw to try to release him there was of course uh... george bush senior and dr kissinger there was the pope the pope in waiting mister retzinger uh... and there was even fidel castra so the note saying that the arrest of general pinochet was a terrible insult latin american leaders so where it was uh... an extraordinary event uh... and it did bring up uh... very yet and and the the final decision of the house of law was quite extraordinarily amazing outside parliament square there were all these torture victims mothers whose children had disappeared and the final decision of the law was was actually televised and uh... on the radio they could hear and the first two five judges the first two voted uh... in favor of uh... upholding pinochet's immunity and one after the other the next three accepted our argument but uh... the achilles heel community the international crime crime against humanity which is constituted by widespread and systematic torture and uh... it was very moving that crowd really erupted and uh... of course one of the judges was found to had a connection with amnesty international and they had to hear the trial all over again and uh... this time they had to find judges who had no interest whatsoever in human rights and so they got uh... six contract experts in commercial law and contract and uh... who never wouldn't know a human right if they fell over it but uh... what they didn't know was that they read they weren't international lawyers they didn't know that these good conventions were meant to be ignored and and uh... not to be enforced and they read the torture convention anyone accused of torture must either be tried or extradited for trial and they said this uh... convention me treaty means what it says and so general pinochet uh... was kept and of course there were lots of people said oh it'll imperil fragile democracy in chile well of course uh... having him out of chile uh... meant that uh... is the amnesties that he'd granted himself could be overturned and eventually of course michelle bashley who was herself the daughter one of his torture victims uh... became president they discovered all sorts of corruption uh... prasheem that was important making people about the benefits and the virtues and the morality of international justice of putting these people no matter how late uh... to some uh... difficulty and and if possible on trial then we got molosevich and that seemed to herald the beginning the indictment of molosevich did weaken his position he lost power uh... and he was delivered to the haig to stand trial and at this point uh... september the tenth two thousand and one one could say uh... things were looking pretty good but there was a setback with uh... september the eleventh there was a particular setback by the bush administration you had in the first george bush and his people adopted the most pure infantile attitude uh... egged on by a man called jessie helms who was the senator of profoundly right wing isolationist views he passed what we call the bomb the haig bill it was the american servicemen's protection and it empowered the president to attack the haig uh... if they arrested an american servicemen seriously you believe it this was two thousand and two as per american still on the books but no one's going to enforce it and it wasn't till the second and of course the one good thing and had a lot of pressure american pressure was put on states not to ratify the international criminal court treaty they'd been a conference in Rome that had agreed on a treaty for an international criminal court in nineteen ninety eight no one thought it would get off the ground for ages because you needed sixty ratifying members amazingly those sixty came by mid two thousand and two so we had an international criminal court from july two thousand and two but the bush regime put pressure on all sorts of countries not to ratify and threatened to withdraw military support so that was uh... a difficult period for international justice with this superpower so opposed to it on quite childish reasons things changed and it had this benefit that the european left hard left which saw malosevic as a kind of incarnation of a of a left-wing socialist hero was condemning international justice as some thought sort of american plot uh... which could hardly run as an argument at a time uh... that the americans were considering invading the hate so uh... but bush in his second term changed uh... i think colon pal was important uh... duff or the concern about genocide in duff or led uh... colon pal security council to ask the security council to use its chapter four powers and interestingly enough china abstained but at least it didn't use the superpower veto america utterly hypocritical uh... having brought and asked the security council to act then itself abstained for fear of jesse helms and the the right-wing republicans but there it was and uh... eventually but she was and of course america was quite supportive in the end of the ad hoc courts we had uh... charles taylor who no one who thought that he was safe in nigeria things change maybe he ran out of money but uh... the nigerians then made him available to the sierra leone court i wanted to try him in sierra leone but there were problems with security his trial went on in the haig it was televised of course in sierra leone but i thought the great thing about the sierra leone court was able to do justice uh... at the scene of the crime but i think that is important if security can be guaranteed we've had paradox discovered eventually melodic discovered eventually and taken for the haig and i think there's been a general satisfaction about the operation of the i ct y as a kind of predecessor of the international criminal court i haven't been very happy with some aspects of it particularly the delays malosevic was indicted uh... his trial went on for three years before he died and it was still a couple of years away from finishing this happens a lot i think the problem is partly nervous judges malosevic was the first head of state and they stood on their heads bent over backwards to be nice to him they allowed him to strut and fret his hours days weeks years on the stage they didn't require him to have counsel they allowed him to grandstand and make all sorts of irrelevant speeches they should given him much less leeway particular problem was the prosecution prosecutors there's a great get over zealous they think that they're sort of appointed by the world to put in every crime that the defendants could ever be said to have committed they think they're writing history they've got to learn to leave history to the historians and to uh... prosecute only those charges which are overwhelming or overwhelmingly important carried a marriage for example faces eleven charges over a number of years there's only one charge need that the world wants him prosecuted for and that is the massacre at srebrenica seven thousand men and boys taken to the woods and shot by groups of serbs who were blessed by orthodox priests before they did this terrible thing on moladich's orders it was moladich who can be seen blowing smoke in the face of the pathetic dutch captain u n captain who was uh... was meant to be keeping srebrenica safe so but again you've got prosecutors who think they've got to throw everything at the defendant and that causes trials to be uh... as long as unconsciously long we're learning these lessons i hope and uh... carried it share courses on trial at the moment moladich will come up soon but the great thing and of course throughout modern period where the nuremberg legacy is being delivered on in a in all sorts of ways we have had this battle between china russia is more opportunistic it tends to uh... vote to protect its own clients to whom it sold arms and uh... well getting oil but uh... it can be quite helpful and america of course the obama administration quite frankly is uh... is almost uh... an associate member of the court it's been uh... very supportive the there are still issues of legitimacy they sold some respects this year security council resolutions nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three these are terribly important resolutions because first of all they were unanimous secondly resolution nineteen seventy referred the situation in libya the international criminal court unanimous decision it may well be that it is because gaddafi was so crazed or so unpopular uh... amongst in the world leaders who had to suffer that uh... that went through but it was an imprimatur on uh... the role of international justice in deciding in in having jurisdiction having power that's what jurisdiction means over people who killed their own people he came after those bloodcurdling broadcasts gaddafi and his son made about slitting the throats of the rats in Benghazi and then resolution nineteen seventy three which empowered nato to use i quote all necessary means to protect the civilians i think in effect nato decided that it was necessary to overthrow the gaddafi regime to protect civilians actions went far beyond those of a no-fly zone but uh... this raises the issue of liberal what is called liberal interventionism a very controversial topic especially in light those who criticize it always refer to the invasion of iraq this seems to me to be totally wrong because george bush was no he didn't invade iraq because saddam had killed at least a hundred thousand of his own people over the years we invaded iraq because we believed that he had weapons of mass destruction that was of course false quite why george bush decided to invade iraq he told a group of senators that it was because saddam had tried to tried to kill my dad uh... that's probably uh... as good a reason as any that you'd get from george bush but there it is now a united nation's doctrine that has emerged from a committee it's been it was adopted by kofia now and it is called the responsibility to protect and it's a very clever amalgam westphalian theory which of course is all based on the absolute right of the state and modern desire to stop the mass murder people civilians at the mercy powerful leaders it virtually it is based on the westphalian uh... view that states are independent one state can't intervene in another state's business but where a state fails in its responsibility to protect its citizens where they are uh... suffering from crimes against humanity brought about by the government then uh... the united nations through the unanimous security council is entitled to intervene to stop the killing it's uh... as it were uh... the state fails in its uh... duty to look after its own people uh... the united nations is entitled to intervene that was the basis of the resolutions nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three and of course you could well ask well why isn't it uh... then the basis for intervention in syria today uh... and that's a good question and you might like to ask you to all indeed ask other questions because i see uh... we've gone for long enough and i'm happy to answer any questions that you have about uh... this uh... quite remarkable development which i do want to stress has come about in the last few years it is really only in the last ten years this doctrine the idea of justice has replaced expediency as uh... a very important factor in international affairs wonderful thank you very much for international twenty five uh... thank you discussed uh... it's not uh... crime uh... uh... uh... do you think it will fit extending uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... yeah i know i i think it's very interesting uh... the fact that uh... george bush's retirement travel is considerably constrained by the people who want to bring him to justice for aggression actually because that's the crime that uh... arguably he committed in invading iraq you know i go back to the protesters on the streets in Damascus with their banners uh... elisade to the Hague it is uh... a lovely idea if you like chris hitchens was one of the first to develop it i don't know if you've seen the film about kissinger putting kissinger on trial for some of his decisions his support for finiché and so forth he too has uh... limited travel schedule but it is part of the malaysian proceedings the proceedings in belgium in particular uh... are getting over the idea however unreal it may be at the moment that international criminal law will one day feel the colors of the most powerful now uh... mengistu mengistu is someone i feel very strongly about because he was the mass murdering marxist in ethiopia and he rushed to the protection of robert magave and he tried he needed a heart operation so he went down to capetown and then a paper found that he was there and he had to rush back without his heart operation uh... to uh... magave's protection the minute magave falls mengistu becomes available uh... for international justice it is that kind of uh... progress i think i mean ten years ago we hadn't indicted anyone uh... any head of state the finish thing came as an enormous shock today we are uh... we are still the Assad is slipping and i think there may be before the year is up uh... resolution nineteen seventy that will allow the international criminal court at least to start compiling a dossier on him his family possibly even his wife who uh... by giving him aid and comfort may well aid in abet his crimes there are things that i think gets the idea going even though at this moment uh... there is no prospect of bush Blair uh... anyone or a western leader being prosecuted for crimes against humanity it teaches them to mind how they go their targeting decisions have been affected very much by uh... international criminal law and uh... that can only be a good thing uh... as to aggression uh... i think it i hope that it will come into the um... as a crime at the moment it's defined by reference to a security council decision or at least by it will be the security council that will decide whether uh... a leader can be put on trial for aggression i'm in favor of it as a crime um... because it seems to me that waging aggressive war is for example Saddam would have committed that crime by invading Kuwait that's a i think a good example of where the crime is necessary and uh... his attacks on the Kurds by chemical gas may also come within that area so i'm supportive of the crime of aggression entering the lexicon there in nuremberg it's it's uh... something that the kan pala conference as you rightly say uh... approved but it's not clear when it's going to actually be operational so uh... but the problem with the american theory of preemptive uh... strikes and um... preventative self-defense is that it just doesn't match with article 51 of the charter or with the general international law relating to self-defense which doesn't give a state uh... nearly because it fears or speculates that it may be in some way under attack uh... the right to um... invade and overthrow another state it's interesting to consider that if that view had prevailed in two thousand and one it would have permitted america to attack afghanistan to occupy all the cave area where bin laden was i think that's entirely reasonable in terms of self-defense after 9-11 but it would not have justified overthrow of the taliban government and so afghanistan would not on that basis have been the problem that it is as for osama well uh... it was a capture operation or a kill operation there's a book that suggests it was a capture operation but that's been derided widely and uh... the belief is that it was really a kill operation and i think that's wrong and uh... that is it amounts to murder or certainly execution and it raises a very real question about the use of drones in a sense the obama administration is using drones far more regularly than the bush administration did and this is the neat euphemism collateral damage really doesn't express the horror of killing children and killing innocence by drone attacks on villages and it is a kind of it's Churchill's list isn't it it's drawing up a list of people who are you think are guilty and uh... then pressing a button that kills them and other people or sometimes just kills other people it's not satisfactory they tend to however i think the mission to capture obama and kill him only if necessary in self defense uh... was justified because he was an international criminal he should have been tried for crimes against humanity um... and that going in a circumstance and killing him first uh... was wrong many people say oh it would have saved us all the horror of the trial well it certainly gave him what he wanted didn't it it gave him the first track to paradise uh... Osama wanted nothing more than to be killed mid jihad the last thing he would have wanted was to end his life in a prison farm in upstate new york uh... i can't imagine anything that would have tortured him more um... so i think that from all and of course the great thing about trial is that they do properly conducted produce a lot of intelligence they produce a lot of history they produce a lot of truth and it's very important because i haven't picked up today they might twig to it later in the week is that far more important than safe is that al-salusi has been caught now al-salusi ran libyan intelligence his brother-in-law the colonel Gaddafi and was deeply involved in blowing up the french passenger jet over chad the uta jet in 1989 he's been convicted in absentia in france not that i agree with trials in absentia unless they have execution in absentia as well but he does know where all the bodies are buried he's responsible he knows about the IRA funding he knows every gift that the Gaddafi regime has made to terrorist organizations and he's in control of people who could hang in from the next land post and i think this is the great danger of trial of course people who are newly newly enfranchised want to kill those who oppress them it's not particularly a point against the libyan people or any people of righteous anger that explode look at the way they strung up Mussolini and his mistress but look at the way Jack Ruby was allowed remember you weren't born but my generation will remember the Dallas cops bringing Lee Harvey Oswald forward and almost standing aside my fellow called Jack Ruby shot him that's understandable but it's got to be stopped it's not right and Alison Lucy is you know he's the crown jewels and getting him alive to the Hague and available for debriefing is really important so that my answer is that Osama alive rather than dead would be a much better way for the world to go I have got three more what your thoughts are about the global efforts to crack down impunity against those who kill journalists human rights defenders of the expression down to tomorrow it's been named International Day Against Impunity by IFACS the human expression exchange and the UN in September had its first interagency meeting to deal with this this is a classic of your thing about sovereign states because the audit system of the UN has allowed states to refuse even to give information on requests and UNESCO is the weakest of the UN but of course you have the Human Rights Council the Human Rights Committees just come up with a landmark new interpretation of international law on freedom of expression extremely hard hitting General Comment 34 which implies there is a positive obligation on states to protect those who are threatened when they use freedom of expression as well as not to allow impunity to prosecute I wonder what you are making You mentioned the length of especially the ICTR trials where there are many charges because of the many of charges that the prosecutors throw I think when you look at the first trial of the International Criminal Court where it comes to Banga the DNC World where it was only charged for one charge including child soldiers and in fact the trial has lasted very long there are obviously other reasons for that but actually if you look at subsequent trials I think the prosecutor has learned to perhaps try suspects with more charges just in case you lose one you'll have the other ones to fall back on so do you think it's right to think that maybe it's just the nature of international criminal trials that they last a very long time rather than anything to do with necessarily the prosecutorial strategy My question has to do with the work in Syria The the work in Syria Syria Sierra Leone, oh yes First I was coming to the Air Force and the landmark judgements to please have a guide report of Syria No doubt customers came to redefine gender crimes where there are new jurisprudence on issues of first marital and sexual slavery but looking at that then looking at the fact that just peasant people were actually in that sense in Syria giving the previous human revolution that took place in that place I was just wondering what is the implication of trying to peasant people in a place where people wake up in the morning and still see people who condemn those atrocities against them walking on the street what's the implication of that to global justice then secondly, looking at Liberia unlike in Syria where there was a special court dealing with this issue in Liberia, nothing seems to have been done in particular about trying the offenders beyond Marcelo and I wonder what has happened in Africa in the last few years what is the implication of that That's a really important question because you can't unless you've been there understand the enormity of what happened in places like Sierra Leone we had a football team that we sponsored at the court who were people who had their limbs hacked because one of the factions after the UN sponsored election went round saying which was opposed to the election went round to people and said what hand did you use to mark the card and our and our football team had lost hands they lost legs they were amazing but it is hard to we were tasked to prosecute those who were primarily responsible for this viciousness a viciousness that they had the juju beliefs killing eating your enemy's heart gives you your enemy's strength and we had to watch cases where prisoners had been killed and their hearts even it was that kind of war and after that horror where you do understand how difficult it is for people to have a drink and see on the same street the person who chopped their hand off this was even worse I think in South Africa where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission much written about and much overrated and much misinterpreted in my view had couldn't prosecute anyone but gave actual pardons to people who came and talked I think Joe Slover was it or certainly some of the apartheid heroes who had their families children and relatives killed by Craig Williamson who was the informer who sent the letter bombs that blew up a number of significant anti-apartheid figures and they speak of the difficulty of seeing him at a bar sort of knocking back beers and telling all and sundry of his exploits in BOS the South African Security Service it's very hard and all we can say I think to survivors is firstly there is a role for truth commissions in enabling people to tell the story of what happened to them in getting the forcing the lesser players who may have shot the guns or whatever or wielded the machete to sit round the table with their victims and talk that may offer some way forward forgiveness after all at the end of the day and the sight of those who led the astray but led them to those barbarities being locked up for the rest of their lives may give some satisfaction that is perhaps the best we can do prosecuting everyone would be too expensive for a start and that's the simple real politic of why international justice at this juncture is limited to those primarily responsible and doesn't get I would have very much liked the ICTY to prosecute the priests the Serb Orthodox priests who blessed the killing squads at Srebrenica we have as you say in Sierra Leone we were the first court to declare that recruiting child soldiers is against international law that forced marriages are against international law and sexual slavery and yes that was done in relation to the those primarily responsible but it is difficult for those who were made sexual slaves by middle ranking people in armies to suffer them again the prosecution yes prosecutors I think sometimes want to do a Nuremberg they want to do the whole history sometimes they take the view tactically that they want to throw a lot of charges in and the hope that one will stick that's a common prosecutorial tactic but I think you're right in this respect that international trials are necessarily going to take longer than national trials because you've got translation problems for a start I mean everything in even the simplest motion in the ICTY has to be translated into French even if no one speaks it it's got to be translated into French but in English inevitably a lot of witnesses to protect and it takes many of them have will not have been in a court before particularly if you've got something going on on the Hague and you need to get your witnesses or your evidence from the Balkans or from Africa yes that I don't pretend that trials are going to be as fast but they've got to be faster I think the Milosevic trial where now I think everyone accepts that accusing him in effect of three different wars was a mistake and they should have concentrated on the one charge that they had the most evidence on there was overwhelming evidence in relation to Kosovo that would have convicted him I think probably within a year it was simple it was all on television and that could have at least proceedings could have ended before he died so I do think we can't expect international justice to be as fast as national justice but there is room for improvement journalists yes and human rights monitors who go out and write reports and perform a journalistic function for amnesty and human rights watch I have a big argument that goes on been going on for a few years with the Red Cross on this because the Red Cross see themselves as the guardians of the Geneva Convention and there is there's no reference to journalists in the first set of Geneva Conventions but in the second set of Geneva Conventions there are some references to journalists being protected as civilians in war so journalists have no special protection in international law they are treated as civilians the problem with this as I try to tell the Red Cross is they're not killed as civilians they're killed because they're journalists they're killed because they're human rights monitors because they might go and testify at an international court that's why they're killed and I think I've been arguing that journalists and human rights monitors in war zones need special protection by having making it an international crime an international war crime to target journalists I think this is a development that we'll have to now wait for the next review conference but a number of states are interested in in having it unless you have it as a specific crime you will just have this idea that journalists can be can be treated as civilians and they're not journalists so long as they don't take up sides in by taking up guns are entitled to maintain their neutrality we've had I acted for the Washington Post journalist Randall in those proceedings in the ICTR which said that war correspondents did have a privilege from testifying the problem in trying to drag journalists in front of international courts where the war is still going on is that if they testify for the prosecution they'll be seen as party pre the prosecution so they won't be able to exercise their function and they may well be subject to attack by the other side so there is an important principle I think at stake and there is a strong argument about making it a specific war crime to kill a journalist I know there are a number of people with questions