hello and welcome to one of the hard work tribunals i'm trying to provide and i think we can felicia i'd love to get your future one but we really believe we can if you national community usually intervening in one of the i can't be post more just to be claimed to be impartial and we are political considerations to be joined by. a british lawyer prosecutor but i'm not sure if you behave and for our kids if you play the international criminal what sir geoffry thank you very much for your time isn't that sure that all tribunals are to some extent delivering victor's justice yes. historically they all delivered a form of victor's justice starting in the first world war second world war. japan

and in germany. when the modern tribunals came about yugoslavia and it was said that they were there to try all sides so that would not be victor's justice and the permanent international criminal court is specifically instructed to look at conflicts in the run so that all sides might be prosecuted. unhappily it's not always the case that the tribunals have been able to prosecute all sides yugoslavia tribunal did attempt to prosecute all sides but the rwanda tribunal failed and there are many people who think that the cases of the international criminal court in africa failed to look at all now i'm sure you encounter that in your legal practice and i saw even be years of covering conflicts that what can turn pretty ordinary nonviolent people into mass murderers and the nature of that transformation is very very. so i would argue if the war environment

itself so ignoring this fact and judging these people by the norms of peace time doesn't do you want justice doesn't your christian reaches the heart of a problem that the world is. not really willing to discuss when i say the world i mean international bodies everybody knows that what you say about the almost inevitable reality of violence in war is true and therefore the question of moral responsibility for the individual person operating in the field is always. hard to ask. but why nevertheless why then interest i ask though because i mean we have these very high profile tribunals and you know politicians and ordinary people are put on trial but. is it really. true justice because some would argue that

the reason these tribunals exist the simpler political to. confirm the historical narrative that is suitable for one side to the conflict or the international community that intervened in that particular conflict it's a problem that has become very clear for example in the african cases but also in other cases around the world but the question that one of the questions that fits with your question is why would these particular conflicts chosen in the first place and not for example conflicts that would involve russia or china or america or britain or that there. and i think we we have we had a couple of cases in history most notably for example the second world war when many of the countries you just mentioned were involved and i think it is clear again from historical records that of the british the solving of the americans

committed crimes against humanity during the second world war yet it were only germans who were prosecuted but when you look at something like for example the bombing of hiroshima or nagasaki beach result that like in more than one hundred thousand of people instantaneously. killed this is all of you know on the same level as having gas chambers he have nobody broad those people who also rise the bombing often i guess like you for no good reason though would strategic reason to justice so again this is this would be an example of not only a very selective justice but actually in a certain powers dominating in dictating what justice really is your absolutely right that there was no investigation or what. so-called war crimes or what are called war crimes were committed by the allies in the second world war what's really interesting is that by having these one sided

trials. history is itself corrupted because people look back home the result of the trial one sided in the case of nuremberg and the tokyo trials and give less or no attention to the possibility of offenses having been committed by the victorious side one of the real problems for the international criminal court is of course that russia china america are not members of the court but have the power in the security council to refer or to block the referral of other countries to the court now this is manifestly seen as unfair throughout the world and it may actually mean that the international court can and cannot survive that long because why eventually will african countries and other countries put up with a system that exposes them to treatment that russia or america china and other countries

don't have to face now when you look at the recent conflict they were all highly personified indicates a few guys lobbied was the loss of a child was portrayed as the butcher of the balkans indicates awfully bad was good dopy the chief criminal and in the case of syria now it is assad who is supposedly killing his own people i wonder why is there so much out persist on believe there is because clearly they were not driving around and doing all the killing themselves societies in their national criminal systems in the international society and its international crime tribunals. needs to be able to divide some people of as having behaved so badly that they should really be regarded as criminals and that's not very much different from what happens in ordinary society but. what is perhaps very important to have in mind is that political and military leaders these days should be counted as knowing what people beneath

them will do if they take certain decisions about propaganda about separating societies and accordingly it may be that the focus of attention should be much more on the leaders who bear responsibility rather than on the low level offenders or perpetrators who commit particularly nasty crimes in the course of war leaders absolutely should know that but it would also include the leaders in the so-called civilised western world who often intervene in this conflict on behalf of one of the five then almost never brought to justice but before we go there let me transition to the tribunal on the yugoslavia in which you took part why been two thirds of the indictee so far are the serbs is there any way to assess whether this figure is really reflective of the actual proportion of crimes committed the fact that in

a multi sided conflict one side may have committed more crimes than the others and may have committed more serious crimes than the others doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a policy whereby if you're an international tribunal you try and prosecute all sides if you're going to do that you should be honest and open about the fact that you may for example be pursuing. macedonian or bosnian or kosovo. alleged war criminals for a lower level of criminality than you are applying for sir sir sir geoffrey you are absolutely positively. the bigger question i'm sorry for interrupting you but the bigger question is of course why isn't the yugoslavia tribunal. doing that i mean if you look at the at the length of the collective sentences for example that was handed out to serbs and crowds and bosnians you know they're they're highly skewed

even if you want to argue that the serbs committed the largest amount or the largest number of crimes. you know from the statistics from the data are we got from disturb you know it is clear that it's simply impossible to have such a highly skewed distribution in any given award simply statistically impossible knowing what we know about the nature of war and violence. the second thing that i wanted to say which in part addresses your question is that once you have a tribe you know in operation interested countries. operate with and through the tribunals or in attempts to write history that favors them and i'm afraid that many people would say. without in

any way excusing. kosovo albanians bosnian muslims bosnian kratz without excusing any of those people some would say that the serbia has been very very skillful. using the i c t y process to rewrite history in this free verbal away as it come from serbia if you look at the worry. serbia it's so resisted the reality is that for brits and obscure good documentation in order to hide what happened from both serbia and both their. listeners or all citizens then you can see how successful you can be the chevron so massacre is pretty much the only thing that people around awhile know about the war in yugoslavia there are a lot of movies that were filmed about this event

a lot of songs popular songs were written about it but. i know that because you have to deal with that on a legal basis i'm sure you know that. serbs would also say that before the chevron it's a massacre took place there was also a mass killing of serbs by the boss man commander named nasser henri tool as far as i know was acquitted and to your earlier point that the serbia tried to many played be the proceedings of the tribunal the if it did hit number off indictments and convictions do not support that but let us come back to this off how just is really the international justice right after the break.

i would rather as questions of people visit with our instead of speaking on their behalf. and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question more. when you take three. or three. richmond three. three. three. moseley braun video for your media project three medio done to our t.v. dot com. wealthy british sign. the time to write

three things will go right around the. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. welcome back to worlds apart from we are discussing international war crimes tribunal but sir geoffrey nice. sir geoffry i know that the u.s.

recently had to have been involved with the international criminal court and the i.c.c. is also fairly often accused of doling out so active justice do a group of this assessment. the i.c.c. had a difficult start with an unfortunate prosecutor luis moreno ocampo. and he left the very first impression the countries he pursued may have been being pursued for political reasons and that was extremely unfortunate. the focus on africa as i dealt with earlier reflects arguably the interest of the international community in avoiding countries like. russia or america. and so on that might have things to answer for in taking a softer target but i'm happily it also reflects the recognition by

some african countries for example uganda. of their ability to use the court. and turn it into a weapon of conflict and why wouldn't man american countries try to manipulate or influence court proceedings when world powers those countries that take pride in being in a standard bearers of human rights have not been brought to books for they are for they are for the crimes that they committed and here of course i'm alluding to the war in iraq you mentioned earlier that the united states is not a signatory to the i.c.c. and for helen sake let me say that neither is russia but britain is for example so . technically speaking tony blair could have been brought to you to corinth war for the british involvement in the iraqi war and let us just say that many of the war crimes were pretty committed there weren't talk him and the use of white phosphorus the false pretext for the war of the torturing the killings of detainees

in iraq you. prevent the under the supervision of western chips so i wonder how you can really try to justify you know court cases against african dictators when you are as a country britain as a country is shielding its own leader from jasper's of course. countries involved in international tribunals of all kinds are likely to try and manipulate them to their own advantage whether or were the law of the great powers have manipulated things to their advantage is not something one can answer that simply not quite as simple as your question would suggest without a full analysis of the evidence but that military action goes on is pretty obvious and everyone accepts it what that tells us are not accepted everyone acknowledges it what that tells us is that these processes if they are to have

a future have to be open to scrutiny by the citizens of the world in whose service they say they they operate and not to be in any sense obscured now i'm going to just take you back to really important point that you should have had in mind in dealing with srebrenica what's very clear from the suppression that happened in the court of available intercepts showing conversations between general manager and some of the milosevic now that evidence was suppressed from outside the court and the only conceivable reason one can think that it was suppressed was not just because it would have shown. things had been in srebrenica and how much belgrade was involved with it may well have shown that because it would have shown how culpable the west might have been for taking insufficient action and these methods of manipulation and not restricted to african countries

trying to turn the course. into a weapon of war against terrorism is these these realities apply everywhere why then given the how much politics influences not only the composition of the trial but the legal procedures who is brought and on what charges why we would try the integrity of those trials at all why should we give them as the world citizens to whom you alluded. earlier why should we give it any chance at all because we know that as you said the world is now is just the distribution of power international power is highly skewed so why have to have these tribunals at all. well because you have to start somewhere you have to trust some people and you have to hope that things will. improve if they're not that good to begin with then maybe . the ability to impose pressure on judges it certainly seems to have happened in

cambodia but if you get to know the judges some of them are extremely many of them maybe most of them are extremely concerned to do the job to the best of their ability let me and let me challenge again the point that you're making it's better to start somewhere because i would assume that if better to start with the countries that again consider themselves to be the flag bearers of democracy and human rights so if anything they're in a much better position to demonstrate that while of the delivery off true justice than any of their african countries actually speaking about africa i was going to ask you about one of the most recent cases where where the i.c.c. also attempted to intervene and i mean libya here the i.c.c. was there from the very beginning presumably to collect evidence of war crimes but what surprised me and a lot of international observers most is that the chief justice of the

i.c.c. at the time mr accompanied only tried to collect the air the evidence but also. tried to publicize them let's listen to what he had to say of the time we are finding some elements confirming this issue of appreciation of. of. the contents. showing the policy. they were binding containers was probably to enhance the books if you do break it is now more or less established that that story was a hoax concocted by the rebels but what surprises me the most is the found body like mr a compass a universally recognized and renowned lawyer would go public with this evidence why the investigation is still ongoing because all we know from the movies that mean

those of us who are not lawyers we know how much care goes into shielding the justices and the jurors and the judges from all that media exposure but you have here the chief justice for the world highest score in convicting mr gaddafi in media court before any legal procedures were even launched let alone complete it he's not the chief justice he's the chief prosecutor if you look at his earlier use of public city in many cases including sudan and kenya in particular it's not surprising that he may find himself being extravagant in the language that he used more than that the whole libyan process some would argue although i have to declare an interest because i have been involved in the libyan case to a limited degree but some would argue that the the court was used in a very obvious way to assist in the process of regime

change because first of all the international community or parts of it england in particular france recognize the provisional look ministration in libya at a remarkably early date earlier really than international law would have allowed and then they found themselves supported by this extremely swift referral and decision by ocampo absurd to be the ultimate indictment of the core of them that it was no. only politically motivated in delivering a judgment but it was actually have played a very active role in influencing the events on the ground that's quieten that's quite a charge for any given chord let alone the international criminal court don't you think so. you know you obviously prefer very black and white propositions like absolute indictment but you alone what's worse than that i mean i just have to let me for you you have to let me finish i'm afraid it's

a very serious criticism that can be made of the court and. if you if we look at the court it did suffer serious criticism campos time now of the overall purpose of the call many citizens would say or. worthy whether it's going to work for the reasons we've discussed is uncertain but a compass go on this a new prosecutor there and one can only say that one hopes the new court or the newly constructed court will learn from the mistakes that appear to have been made in his time can i just ask you the final question because really running out of time also on leaving you just express to hold that possibly dear the r.c.c. will learn from the mistakes of its. you know previous members and would alter its proceedings but. you know that be i.c.c. is still very relevant when it comes to leave it not only because of the justices

and the legal counsel that is denied to you save got off you but also because of the thousands of the so-called prophet off the loyalists who are rotting all the costly be in many many prisons there and it's well documented that the scale of human rights abuses in libya is much greater now than it was average hearing begin after all so my question to you is why the i.c.c. that was so concerned about the observance of human rights in libya prior to you the murder of get off you why is it so nonchalant about it now. i agree with you and i think the use of the word no so long as it is a very good word of all possibly use it in some later filings i make of the court they have shown themselves apparently willing to accept that libya can deliver justice to. saif gadhafi ill and all that i suppose there's

a new see if that becomes relevant rather than try and. right to have those men tried in the hague we're still awaiting the decision it may come out and everybody thinks that they will be compelled eventually to say who those people must be handed over for trial in the hague but you're quite right that thus far they have been singularly notional about the level of justice being offered in libya when for example in the kenya case they took a radically different approach and were highly critical of kenya and determined to keep kenya the president for trial in the hay so yes different standards and very troubling and yet international justice apparently not so jack but unfortunately this is all we have time for believe join us again playing time here on the part.

if. heat is easy to heat in if you feed. it it'll. cut its. lead. player .

play . up clue. real damage and complexity of this oil spill was not something you can grasp just by looking at dirty birds we have between four to five million people in this directly affected area of the coast and it's pretty clear why it's not being reported because b.p. can't afford to have a reported all along the gulf coast are clean they are safe and they're open for

business if b.p. is the single largest oil contributor to the pentagon the us war machine is heavily reliant upon b.p. and their oil this is a huge step backwards for the marker see it's a step forward oligarchy carex it is toxic is a look a lot like spraying and. it was it was not a picture that either the government or b.p. really wanted to have out there i don't want dispersants to be the agent on. this bills.

news n r t ecuador says it can't grant asylum to the one on the run whistleblower edward snowden and while he is not on its soil the n.s.a. leaker remains holed up in a moscow airport. while snowden's revelations of a new case huge phone and online tapping hasn't put the government off to sting the spying budget despite toughening a series. and agents military bracing itself for mass rallies with the opposition preparing to take to the streets to vent its anger at president morsi who is about to mark his first year in the top job.