Diary
Universal jurisdiction should be scrapped
05 February, 2010
Remember Downing Street’s exasperation last December over the arrest warrant issued for Tsipi Livni. Remember all that faux outrage, the indignation at the abuse of the law, and the endless promises that ‘this will never happen again.’ Well, it all turned out to be so much New Labour hot air.
Jack Straw has led the opposition to any imminent change to the law of international jurisdiction. He does not stand alone. A significant number of his Labour colleagues also oppose a change in the law with an early day motion attracting no less than 108 signatures. There is every possibility of a highly significant and (for the government) damaging backbench revolt.
While not enough to defeat the Government, these 108 MPs might persuade Messrs Brown, Straw and Miliband to renege on the pledges made to their Israeli ‘allies’ only weeks earlier. In any case, Straw always has one eye on his Muslim constituents in Blackburn while the government has a collective eye on the forthcoming election.
Just to clarify, the universal jurisdiction law allows a private individual to demand an arrest warrant for someone who happens to be on British soil, even though that individual may not be British and his alleged crimes were committed abroad. While it was originally designed to hold to account those responsible for the most egregious abuses of human rights (torture, genocide etc.), it has since become a politicised weapon used by the enemies of the West. Israelis have been singled out by this legislation on several occasions, the latest being Tsipi Livni who was forced to cancel her trip to London after an arrest warrant was issued.
As things stand, opposition Israeli politicians or generals could face arrest the moment they touched down on British soil. And very soon, this deplorable situation could be tested to the limit. It was widely reported yesterday that Livni is planning another trip to the UK, which will test David Miliband’s promises of a change in the law to the limit.
But even an amendment to the law would be insufficient. For one thing, the power to issue arrest warrants should not lie with the Attorney General who is, after all, a politician first and foremost. The elephant in the room is the very notion of universal jurisdiction, a nightmarish juridical albatross slung around the necks of Western democracies.
At first glance, a law to arrest war criminals, torturers and mass murderers has some merit. Who would not like to see Robert Mugabe and Sudan’s Al Bashir brought to trial for their murderous policies?
But that is just it – they won’t. Dictators and masterminds of terror seem to be getting off scot free while their democratic counterparts are the ones being targeted. No one is proposing to arrest Chinese or Russian politicians despite the horrors being perpetrated in Tibet and Chechnya. The leader of Hamas would have an easier time in London that a former Israeli general. The leftward bias is hard to miss.
As a result, foreign judges could take it on themselves to initiate show trials of politicians, often based on the most spurious interpretations of what constitutes ‘a war crime.’
This is part of the reason why universal jurisdiction is so problematic. It allows judges to make decisions affecting other country’s citizens but without regard for accountability. Yet, as Daniel Hannan argues so persuasively, crimes are the responsibility of the state in which they take place. Tyrants should be brought back to the nation where their crimes were committed rather than being shipped off for a tedious trial at an ‘international’ court. And this cannot be done until they are militarily defeated by another power.
International jurisdiction is a powerful idea precisely because it tallies with the idea that nations are redundant. This is why the left adore it. Not only does it give them a stick with which to beat their favourite enemies (US, Israel etc.) but it bypasses the very ideas of national sovereignty and territorial sovereignty which are the cornerstones of Western politics. This new ‘lawfare’ is a threat to the West but, as so often, one that we have helped to create.
Post to Delicious
