Letters | 29 August 2013

Reasons to try a tyrant

Sir: The premise of Douglas Murray’s otherwise compelling essay (‘Dictating terms’, 25 August) is mistaken. He doubts whether the conviction of malevolent dictators by the International Criminal Court acts as a deterrent to other wicked leaders. Of course it does not. Nothing will deter a monster from iniquity. The principal objective of the ICC must therefore be simple retribution. Why create an offence if a transgression is met with impunity? Tyrants who commit crimes against humanity deserve punishment, not to deter others (even the gallows is unlikely to achieve that), but because they must suffer for their evil.

Murray contends that innocent lives might be saved if, instead of being prosecuted, these ogres were given sanctuary, as Idi Amin was in Saudi Arabia. But this is cold comfort for their victims, or indeed anyone who yearns to see justice done. If the purpose is to eliminate a wicked leader, then his speedy dispatch — as with Caesar, Mussolini, and Gaddafi — would surely be a more efficient method. Even those domestic tribunals that ‘tried’ and executed Saddam Hussein and the Ceausescus offer a more expeditious solution than a safe haven elsewhere.

If, however, we acknowledge that international law — and hence the ICC — is the legitimate environment in which genocide and other heinous crimes are to be judged and penalised, then we need radically to improve the administration of the trial process itself. The court’s protracted and costly procedures must be completely overhauled. The number of witnesses on both sides should be reduced to an absolute minimum. No hearing should exceed a year. Proper case management would transform what is in danger of becoming an expensive pantomime into a genuine exercise of fair and speedy due process.
Raymond Wacks
Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory, University of Hong Kong

Napoleonic example

Sir: Douglas Murray is correct in stating that the threat of potential ICC ‘victors’ justice’ encourages dictators to remain in situ hoping to defeat insurrection, irrespective of how many additional deaths are caused.