Institute of Democracy and Cooperation

March 2009 - two lectures in London

Publication day: 16/4/2009

On 26 and 27 March 2009, the Director of Studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, John Laughland, took part in two conferences in London on international criminal justice.

The first took the form of a debate organised by ICC Watch, a lobby group which campaigns against the ICC and its threat to democracy and the rule of law. John Laughland debated against Mark Littlewood, a supporter of the Court and of international institutions generally. The debate took place in the offices of the think-tank, Policy Exchange, directly opposite Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. After the debate, there was a lively discussion with the audience, which included numerous Sudanese and other diplomats from the Arab world, as well as a representative of Human Rights Watch.

The next day, John Laughland spoke alongside the former Prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, at the first panel of a day-long conference entitled “Prosecuting Presidents” organised by the Royal United Services Institute. RUSI is the official think-tank of the British Ministry of Defence and it is the oldest think-tank in the world. Founded by the Duke of Wellington in 1831, the Institute is housed in one of the few remaining parts of the old Whitehall Palace (mostly destroyed by fire in 1698). Indeed, it was on a scaffold erected directly outside what is now RUSI’s front door that the first head of state ever to face criminal tribal was executed: King Charles I was beheaded here in 1649 after his trial in Westminster Hall, a few hundred metres along the street.

John Laughland spoke on “From Nuremberg to the Hague: the lessons of justice and punishment”. He emphasised, though, that the history of prosecuting heads of state started long before 1945. Nuremberg itself, moreover, was only one of a whole swathe of trials conducted against Axis leaders and wartime collaborators across Europe after the Second World War.

The history of such trials, Laughland argued, showed that they were always political events. The prosecution of a former head of state is itself a political act because it shows that a new sovereignty has come into being. Very often such trials are marred by violations of due process, notably the use of retroactive legislation, and this too is often deliberate – to show the illegitimacy of the old regime. Unfortunately, the violations are not stopping as time goes on. Only recently, the International Criminal Court has confirmed the indictment of the Sudanese president, Omar Al-Bashir, even though the Rome Statute and customary international law (as confirmed by numerous rulings of the International Court of Justice) do not give it the right to do so.

Laughland emphasised, indeed, that even Nuremberg did not set a precedent for such indictments. Nuremberg is often cited because, as an international tribunal, it seems to have set a precedent for international jurisdiction. Laughland argued, however, that the Nuremberg Charter was specifically framed so that only Axis leaders could be prosecuted and in reality only Germans were. The jurisdiction was therefore anything but universal. Moreover, the American judges at Nuremberg in a later trial in 1947 specifically ruled out the sort of judicial interventionism now practised by the ICC.

The conference was well attended by ambassadors, journalists, human rights activists, Africa specialists and academics. Following the conference, Laughland gave two TV interviews, one to Russia Today (on NATO enlargement) and the other to South African TV (South African Broadcasting Corporation).

The official report of the RUSI conference can be read here.