HM Prison Frankland is a maximum-security prison in northeastern England with an infamous inmate: Charles Taylor, Liberia’s former president. He is serving a 50-year sentence there for “aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history” during the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone that began in 1991.
One lawyer played a crucial role in Mr. Taylor’s conviction: Geoffrey Robertson, a British Australian human rights barrister. He helped set up the Special Court for Sierra Leone (established by the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations) and sat on it as an appeal judge.
Mr. Robertson is now going after a far more powerful leader: the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. In a new book, “The Trial of Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Robertson — a speaker at this week’s Athens Democracy Forum — demands that Mr. Putin be prosecuted for his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, on the grounds of aggression: one state using armed force against the sovereignty, integrity or independence of another.
“Putin’s truculence and his nuclear power make his actual trial unlikely in the foreseeable future,” Mr. Robertson admits in the book. So he suggests that Mr. Putin be tried in absentia — “if the alternative is to have no trials at all.”
Mr. Robertson was a law student at the University of Sydney when he first became interested in human rights law. He wrote a study on the unfairness and prejudice that the Aboriginal community faced under English law.
A Rhodes scholar, he attended Oxford University and later established a human-rights law practice: Doughty Street Chambers in London. His clients have included the author Salman Rushdie, the Washington Post war correspondent Jonathan Randal and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Robertson explained why he was so determined to see Mr. Putin in the dock. He also remembered a former protégé: Keir Starmer, who is Britain’s new prime minister. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
What was the trigger for you to write this book?
The legacy of the Nuremberg trials in 1945 against high-ranking Nazi officials. Nuremberg established that leaders who were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths would be prosecuted in this life, rather than left to history or an afterlife.
The Putin invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, was so obviously a breach of the law against aggression as defined by the International Criminal Court that I just wanted to follow through and apply Nuremberg and see what would happen.
How would that work?
It’s a long shot, and I’m the first to admit that it’s a long shot, but you never know. There was one revolt against Putin that didn’t succeed. If the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had followed through to Moscow and rattled him, who knows?
It may be that Putin will be overthrown. It may be that the army will put him out. It may be that he’ll end up like Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic: No one thought that Milosevic would end up in the dock at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but he was swapped for an easing of sanctions.
If Putin is not in the dock, how would his trial have impact? How would it get international attention?
The International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan certainly got international attention last year when he announced that he would apply for a warrant against Putin over the estimated 20,000 children who have allegedly been kidnapped and trafficked from Ukraine. It shows that the question of indicting Putin is still alive.
If the tribunal is under the banner of the United Nations, if it contains judges from powerful countries not otherwise involved, if it presents an authoritative statement of the facts and the law, and if both sides are allowed to argue the case, then it would be an important decision. It would carry authority, and to that extent, international law could be vindicated.
I don’t think there’s very much that Putin could say. We’ve got television pictures of his tanks rolling toward Kyiv. We know exactly what he did, what he ordered.
You write that trying him in absentia is better than not trying him at all.
Yes, it’s the best we can do. The trial of Putin would be publicized. The judgment would be clear and would be condemnatory.
It would be shameful if Putin were to walk away without a glove laid on him.
The tribunal that prosecuted Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, which you had a major role in, seems a template for what you would like to see done to Putin, right?
Yes, absolutely. The Sierra Leone court is often mentioned as exemplifying the kind of court that could be established for Putin.
What was it like setting up that tribunal?
I went to Sierra Leone, and it wasn’t easy to construct a court in a country where people were still fighting. It was a three-way war, and we managed to prosecute all three sides. We got the provocateur Charles Taylor, who’s still in prison.
Others see it as the most successful U.N. tribunal. I was deeply involved in establishing it, setting up the rules of the court and seeing it through for the first five years. It was quite an experience, in the ruins of a country that was the poorest in the world and so badly affected by the civil war.
One of your mentees at Doughty Street Chambers, Keir Starmer, is now the prime minister of Britain.
Yes, I was responsible for giving him his place in Doughty Street Chambers. I was on the interviewing committee. He didn’t interview very well.
Why not?
He was very nervous. But I thought, and always have thought, that you’ve got to go beyond the kind of interview at which hale and hearty Brits always succeed — at which the upper-class Old Etonians do well. They’re trained to do well in that situation.
Keir Starmer was brilliant. I took him to Europe for a couple of big cases, and he was a very good lawyer, not in a bombastic sense. He’s not a great orator, but he impressed judges by the logic and coherence of his arguments. He goes for arguments or for solutions that will have real effect. He’s prepared to stop popular initiatives even if it’s not going to bring him favor. He’s sane and sensible.
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