Geoffrey Robertson's Blog, page 4

War crimes: Charles Taylor now, Bashar al-Assad next

Justice has a momentum, and as Liberia's ex-leader is jailed, he's certain to be followed by other despots

International criminal justice grinds slowly, but it can grind exceedingly small. Charles Taylor was first indicted in 2003 for crimes against humanity, in a UN court over which I presided. Then, he strutted the world stage as a head of state. Ghana refused our request to arrest him when he visited, and Nigeria gave him refuge for several years. There was a general expectation that he would escape trial, but the whirligig of time brings its changes and revenges: Taylor was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment, for aiding and abetting 11 kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging from terrorism, rape and murder of civilians, to recruiting child soldiers and child sex slaves.

The power to punish heads of state for crimes against humanity is a recent discovery: Cromwell's lawyers managed it with Charles I, but their judges were in due course executed for treason. Napoleon we exiled instead to St Helena, and not even FE Smith and Lloyd George could persuade their allies at Versailles to try the Kaiser for invading Belgium.

Britain must end its sordid treatment of the Chagossian people now

That the US could use the Chagos Islands to bomb Iran is another good reason why the UK must restore them to Mauritius

David Cameron met Navin Ramgoolam, the prime minister of Mauritius, today. It appears they discussed what Robin Cook called "one of the most sordid and morally indefensible" episodes in our postwar colonial history: namely the deceitful treatment of the Chagossian people. Ramgoolam told a Guardian reporter that the meeting was "very cordial" so perhaps there is now hope Britain will finally mitigate its complicity in an international crime that is, the use of Diego Garcia for torture and rendition and prevent any involvement of the UK if the US uses it to launch an attack on Iran in the future. The Chagos archipelago should be restored to its rightful owner.

That owner is Mauritius, of which the Chagos Islands were always part, ceded to the UK by France in the 1814 treaty of Paris. When decolonisation was ordered by the UN in the 1960s, it came with the international law requirement that the whole of a colonial territory should be granted independence. But the US wanted the islands for a cold war base and secretly offered the Wilson government a discount on Polaris missiles if it excised Chagos from Mauritius and got rid of the Chagossians.

Extradition of Abdullah al-Senussi is a blow to international justice

Muammar Gaddafi's spy master should have been tried at the international criminal court which indicted him last year

The extradition of Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi's spy master, from Mauritania for trial in Tripoli is a blow to international justice and to the government's pretended support for it. Although one of the worst men left in the world, Senussi should have been tried, first and fairly, at the international criminal court (ICC) which indicted him last year.

Afterwards, there are claims from France (where he was convicted in absentia for organising the bombing of a UTA passenger plane) and he should face questioning over his role in Lockerbie. Instead, without a murmur of protest from Britain or the UN security council, he has been returned to Libya where he will receive not justice, but revenge.

Yulia Tymoshenko is Europe's Aung San Suu Kyi

Ukraine's still-Stalinist judiciary was used to destroy the former prime minister. Now the United Nations will hear of her plight

Yulia Tymoshenko, heroine of the "orange revolution" and one of the few women ever to achieve prime ministerial office in the former Soviet republics, is not allowed to stand in Ukraine's current national election. For the last 15 months she has been in prison, convicted for actions that would not amount to a crime in any other democracy. She is subjected to the grossest invasion of her privacy (almost every movement she makes is videoed) and constantly defamed by the president and his tame prosecutors. Europe seems to have abandoned her; but tomorrow, at the UN's human rights committee, the UK can bring her situation to the world's attention.

Her innocence of any real crime is clear from the judgments at her trial and final appeal. She was convicted of the vague charge of "abuse of office" by reaching a deal with Putin which resolved a gas crisis in January 2009 that risked causing deaths in central Europe. Russia had cut off gas to Ukraine and through it, to a number of countries and was going to continue doing so unless transportation charges were increased. With the encouragement of the EU and Angela Merkel, Tymoshenko flew to Moscow and reached a compromise.

The UN should put North Korea in the dock at The Hague

The UN should treat Kim Jong-un's threat as a crime against humanity, and refer it to the ICC

North Korea's threat to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US need not be taken seriously yet. But it has the bomb (in fact 12, by reliable estimate) and ballistic missiles, and it will take only a few years to design a nuclear warhead and a re-entry heat shield for the drop on Hollywood. By then Iran may have the bomb, as well as Saudi Arabia, and perhaps even Egypt. We will, by that time, feel nostalgic for the good old days of the cold war. So what do we do, other than wait for when the American president decides to carpet-bomb Pyongyang?

North Korea's threats have served to expose the fatal flaw in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. This was negotiated after the Cuban missile crisis with the object of limiting nuclear weapons to five great, or at least sensible, superpowers which would, one fine day, agree on reducing their arsenals to zero.

David Cameron should reject both press charters and opt for an ombudsman

Politicians and newspapers are wrong to accept Leveson as holy writ and both their proposed systems threaten free speech

What is the reading public to make of the Mexican stand-off between politicians and the press? Each has produced a royal charter to regulate the behaviour of journalists, which threaten up to £1m in fines and even more in "exemplary damages" with forced front-page apologies for breaches of taste or privacy. Both claim to implement the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson one by law, the other by industry agreement. But both threaten free speech and neither will encourage the adventurous investigative journalism needed to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the powerful.

Edward Snowden's fear of flying is justified

Snowden is a refugee, not a spy. But America has history when it comes to forcing down planes in defiance of international law
Edward Snowden 'to leave Moscow airport' live updates

As Edward Snowden sits in an airside hotel, awaiting confirmation of Russia's offer of asylum, it is clear that he has already revealed enough to prove that European privacy protections are a delusion: under Prism and other programmes, the US National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ can, without much legal hindrance, scoop up any electronic communication whenever one of 70,000 "keywords" or "search terms" are mentioned. These revelations are of obvious public interest: even President Obama has conceded that they invite a necessary debate. But the US treats Snowden as a spy and has charged him under the Espionage Act, which has no public interest defence.

That is despite the fact that Snowden has exposed secret rulings from a secret US court, where pliant judges have turned down only 10 surveillance warrant requests between 2001 and 2012 (while granting 20,909) and have issued clandestine rulings which erode first amendment protection of freedom of speech and fourth amendment protection of privacy. Revelations about interception of European communications (many leaked through servers in the US) and the bugging of EU offices in Washington have infuriated officials in Brussels. In Germany, with its memories of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the protests are loudest, and opposition parties, gearing up for an election in September, want him to tell more.

The privacy of ordinary Australians is under serious threat

Intelligence representatives offered to share the confidential data of law-abiding Australians with international partners. In this Orwellian climate, who will guard the guardians?

The latest Snowden document, revealed by Guardian Australia today, increases concern that the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) is operating outside its legal mandate. The minutes of a policy meeting in Britain in 2008, with their US, Canadian, UK and New Zealand counterparts, reveal DSD representatives claiming that they were entitled to share the confidential data of Australians with these partners, and were even considering disclosing them to non-intelligence agencies without first obtaining a warrant.

This would be a breach of sections 8 and 12 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001. Snowdens evidence that that DSD ignored this law (or was ignorant of its correct interpretation) raises the prospect that law-abiding Australians have had their personal data wrongfully collected and transmitted to bodies which may use it to damage them.

The vilification of Nigella Lawson: this is no way to treat a witness

The justice system depends on people like Lawson doing their public duty to give evidence. In return, they need protection

Isleworth crown court may not be the SW3 of the legal profession, but for the past few weeks a commonplace trial for fraud has become a national spectacle, as the privacy of the Lawson/Saatchi marriage, home and family life has been put on public display. The case of R v Grillo & Grillo turned into the trial of Nigella Lawson, who having admitted some drug use spent as long on the stand as either defendant, and faced a more hostile cross-examination. Is this the right way to treat a witness?

Criminal justice is dependent upon the willingness of witnesses to testify in public a nerve-racking experience. If they or their family can be vilified, in the defamation-free zone of a courtroom, then they will be reluctant to do this civic duty. This case could undermine confidence that the justice system will be fair to them, however scrupulously it protects the rights of defendants.

Yulia Tymoshenko's trial was a travesty of justice

Having suffered unfairly under Ukraine's corrupt justice system, the former prime minister must now reform it

Yulia Tymoshenko's miraculous release at the weekend was from a seven-year prison sentence imposed for a non-existent crime. The former Ukrainian prime minister had done nothing wrong: the police, prosecutors and jurists who fabricated her offence were subservient to a state that wanted her eliminated. Whether or not Tymoshenko becomes president of her embattled country, Europe needs to find a way to deal with officials who are complicit in human rights abuses.

Tymoshenko was accused of abuse of office, because she made a deal with Vladimir Putin when he stopped gas supplies to Ukraine in the winter of 2009. This threatened a humanitarian disaster unless Ukraine agreed to pay a higher price for Russian gas. Under pressure from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, and with her people dying from hypothermia, Tymoshenko gave in to Putin's demands. Some criticised her for not holding out for longer, and she narrowly lost the presidential election a few months later to Viktor Yanukovych.