Category: Trials
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Embodying Evidence: 30 Years Ago Today
30 years ago today, the court began to play – for real. James Gow On Tuesday 7 May 1996, the usher opened the witness entrance door to the Trial Chamber and asked how it felt to be making history… After my brief hesitation, he added ‘you’ll be in the history books now.’ In August 1994,…
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Nuremberg Film Review
by Chloe Smith Theatrical release poster from Wikipedia James Vanderbilt’s new historical drama Nuremberg takes as its subject matter the trial of the Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of the Second World War. For nearly two and a half hours, the film centres on perpetrators; exploring the Nazi psyche through its portrayal of Hermann…
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The Shadow of Impunity: Justice for the killing of Baha Mousa and lessons for Afghanistan
Elizabeth Brown Twenty years ago, on 15 September 2003, a 26-year-old Iraqi man named Baha Mousa died following catastrophic mistreatment carried out by British soldiers in a detention facility in Basra. The incident spawned a complex web of accountability efforts, including a Royal Military Police investigation, a Court Martial, a judicial review case which ultimately…
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Never say never? The ICC, Putin and Ukraine
by Rachel Kerr On 1 March 2022, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, QC, announced that he was able immediately to open an investigation into the situation in Ukraine. Earlier the same week, Khan had indicated that he was seeking authorisation to do so, and suggested that it could be expedited…
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Putin and the End of ‘Genocide’?
by James Gow When Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his attack on Ukraine as ‘genocide’ prevention, the hollowness was astounding, the term emptied of meaning. It has become stock for one side to cry ‘genocide’ in pretty much every violent conflict of the past three decades. Those cries usually come from those subject to attack…