Hamas’ latest “freedom fighters”: lawyers?
Mixed bag of responses today in The Times’ online comments section appended to a story about accusations of war crimes filtering their way through various Western countries’ legal systems, levelled not at the usual motley crew of African nutters but at sophisticated, Westernised ancients of the Israeli government. Whatever your stance, that’s a development that’s bound to provoke interesting and possibly quite uncomfortable reactions from readers and leaders throughout the UK, and it’ll be interesting to see how the media picks this one up.
Unlike other systems, it is said that in the UK, political will can find it hard to block cases coming to court, because anyone in the UK can make the accusation and take it forwards, without the case being picked up (or shelved) by a prosecuting lawyer (e.g. in France, juge d’instruction).
It will be interesting to see how Cabinet can somehow repair ties. The Israelis are very displeased:
President Peres described the incident as “one of the greatest political mistakes” that Britain could have made and calling for the law to be changed.
Calling for our law to be changed, because they don’t want ex-leaders, now retired and stripped of their diplomatic immunity, having to stand trial for war crimes. Surely the office charged with protecting British values and interests around the world appreciates the strength of our system, and the will of our democratically elected Parliament in incorporating the United Nations Convention Against Torture into the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and responded in kind? Er…
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday that the Government was “looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again”.
Yes. How terribly embarrassing, sorry about that chaps.
To dump this action would be to risk a very serious constitutional crisis within the UK, one that has been building for a while.
Remember that the arrest, in London, of General Augusto Pinochet for war crimes (wanted under Spanish warrant) was considered by many as one of the most significant developments in human rights and international law since the Nuremberg trials. remember, then, that our Home Secretary (none other than Jack Straw, the miserable shit) found a back door to let him go rather than send him to Spain: grounds of ill-health made him unsuitable to go to Spain to stand trial.
So he went back to Chile, stood up from his wheelchair and smiled.
We seem somehow to have escaped the battle even more recently, after the government decided that a case against BAE (bribery and corrupt business deals with Saudi Arabia) should be dropped due to:
- ‘national security’ – a breakdown of relations with Saudi Arabia threatening bilateral anti-terrorism efforts if we decided to go after the globally corrupt instead
- fear of job losses: under EU law the UK government cannot continue to contract with BAE if it is found guilty of corruption, which it argues might cripple the arms manufacturer far more critically than any punishment imposed
And the most immediate context is the growing anger at how easily members of our 2003 administration are escaping serious questioning over our entry into the Iraq war and subsequent behaviour therein.
I for one encourage serious outrage if our law gets changed or meddled with at the behest of alleged criminals in foreign lands.
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