Clooney Moves To Close UK War Crimes Loophole
Russian generals committing war crimes in Ukraine can't be tried in the UK. Soon that may change.
Most countries have laws sealing out any possibility that people with outstanding international arrest warrants against them—for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against human humanity—may enjoy safe haven within their borders. The very few countries whose laws do not allow the state to prosecute international human rights warrants effectively offer immunity to perpetrators of the worst of all crimes.
The UK is one of the countries that has no legal way to arrest such people. International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney wants UK laws reformed to prevent Russian war criminals and perpetrators of genocide entering the UK to avoid prosecution.
Currently, the UK’s International Criminal Court Act of 2001 applies only to such crimes if they are committed in England or Wales, or outside the UK by a UK national, a UK resident or a person subject to UK service jurisdiction.
There is just one exception in this law: UK courts may try cases involving torture, regardless of the suspect’s or the victim’s nationality or residence. Clooney wants the law expanded to include genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
To this end, SNP MP Brendan O’Hara has introduced The Universal Jurisdiction (Extension) Bill in the House of Commons. The bill, which O’Hara drafted in close cooperation with Clooney, includes a provision that neither the accused person nor the victim would need to have a specific connection to the UK. Ms. Clooney told the PA news agency:
National courts around the world can put war criminals on trial. But in the UK genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes can only be prosecuted if the suspect is a resident or national of the UK. And only two trials for international crimes have resulted in convictions. It is time to reform our laws so that Russian war criminals can be arrested at Heathrow—and perpetrators of genocide know there is no safe haven on UK shores.”
The Clooney Foundation for Justice and Redress, co-founded by Amal and husband George Clooney, is expected to release a substantial legal brief on the issue later this year. Referencing the coming report, Mr. O’Hara told MPs:
In short, this Universal Jurisdiction (Extension) Bill is about saying to the world’s worst criminals that there is no hiding place and there will be no immunity. As the Clooney Foundation for Justice report will set out, our courts already have universal jurisdiction when it comes to torture and certain other crimes which can be prosecuted regardless of the defendant’s nationality.
He added:
So, there is no convincing explanation for the distinction that’s drawn between the law on torture and those other international crimes. And, as they say, one consequence of this loophole could well be that Russian generals with blood on their hands could potentially still travel to the UK, go shopping in Knightsbridge, undergo medical treatment and dine out in London’s best restaurants without facing the risk of arrest for the most serious and heinous crimes in the world.
Amal Clooney studied law at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, at NYU. She married actor George Clooney in 2014, and their first philanthropic act as a couple was donating the profits from their wedding photos to their foundation.
Clooney worked as an advisor to Kofi Annan for a United Nations commission on Syria and on a study on the use of drones in counter-terrorist activities. In 2015, she submitted evidence to the European Court of Human Rights that secured investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova’s release from prison. She represented Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad in her landmark case against the Islamic State for mass rape, sex-trafficking and genocide.
I predict it will be a tough ride. I study economic theory, and we have already have a system in place that lives and lets live and lets killers go free. This is a much more general condition than what you refer to, a blood-spattered killer who can go shopping --- or take international flights. Almost all of them have been getting away with it for years. That is the system we already have. (And my position is it should be changed.) Nobody asks about the blood on a person's hands and the business did they would make less money. But they do not. So I think this is like the case you describe, where a country cannot try or arrest persons who commit criminal acts because the perpetrators are -as you say in the article -effectively protected within the system. Again: we already have a system where no one will ask you where your money came from. Or who you have been torturing, if anyone. In classical liberal social theory this is considered quite the norm, and therefore not a bad thing. So we would need to ask
some basic economic questions if anyone even cared. But look: Persons relish that freedom. Part of it is that when torturers go to restaurants, act like others act, pay and walk out we feel it has nothing to do with us. We watch impassively. It's basic freedom. No one points out that it means freedom for the bad guys as well. And this is very system that has delivered and created a dominant capitalist regime in the global arena today. I would like to suggest that a greater consideration is to just ask why people are good or bad. The idea that you can catch every criminal is very bourgeois. Persons either do or do not do those things in the first place. Going around interrogating everybody is difficult. The better question might be: "How do we create a society of good people"? Rather than: "how do we catch every person who does bad?"
Congrats on 'Politisage' and on bringing these ideas to the light of all the brilliant readers!