:01:30. > :01:34.Supertext captions by Red Bee Media - www.redbeemedia.com.au. You seem
:01:34. > :01:40.to bring a personal sense of mission to your work. Where does
:01:40. > :01:46.that come from? Is it your experience? Well, my family belong
:01:47. > :01:50.to the community in Iran, which has been traditionally the scapegoat,
:01:50. > :01:55.faced violent persecution for many years. I would say that the
:01:55. > :02:00.execution of my uncle in the summer of 198 1, when I was still a child,
:02:00. > :02:10.solely because of his religious beliefs, left a deep impression on
:02:10. > :02:16.
:02:17. > :02:22.me. Those intimate encounters with suffering clearly opened my mind to
:02:22. > :02:26.the search for justice. And the worst thing is, the feeling of
:02:26. > :02:31.helplessness as a victim. When you are in exile and a loved one has
:02:31. > :02:35.just been tortured to death and you have the sense that there is no way
:02:35. > :02:41.that you can achieve any form of justice. And that is the beginning
:02:41. > :02:45.of a journey very often, you begin to understand that justice is a
:02:45. > :02:49.much more profound long-term struggle. So in a sense, you are
:02:49. > :02:52.pursuing some of your own personal demons through these
:02:52. > :02:57.internationally courts? I think those experiences make us
:02:57. > :03:04.understand in a profound are way why justice is important. We can't
:03:04. > :03:09.reduce human rights, what really motivates us to achieve justice
:03:09. > :03:15.against overwhelm odds is the sense of indignation and I believe that
:03:15. > :03:19.once I experienced this in my own personal life, it opened me to
:03:19. > :03:23.understanding how somebody in Rwandan or wherever else may feel
:03:23. > :03:29.if somebody that they love has been taken away from them, through
:03:29. > :03:34.violence. You helped set up called the Iran tribunal which sat in The
:03:34. > :03:39.Hague in October 2012 to hear allegations of crimes after the
:03:39. > :03:44.Islamic revolution. But it had no legal standing, had it? It wasn't
:03:44. > :03:51.set up any properly constituted authority? This can be described as
:03:51. > :03:57.a truth commission. Mothers who lost their children, who have an
:03:57. > :04:00.organisation of a notorious mass grave, came to me and said that
:04:01. > :04:05.aurp former United Nations prosecutor, can you do justice for
:04:05. > :04:09.us. It was a very humbling moment because I told them that there is
:04:09. > :04:16.no court to bring their case to. We decided to set up our own court,
:04:16. > :04:24.which has all of the trappings as a properly constituted court, a panel
:04:24. > :04:28.of prominent judges, including the head of the former South African
:04:28. > :04:33.Constitutional Court and to begin the political transformation in
:04:33. > :04:39.Iran by exposing the historical truth. Did it have any affect in
:04:39. > :04:44.Iran itself? I would say that the affect was remarkable. We broadcast
:04:44. > :04:50.the testimony of the victims through satellite TV, through the
:04:50. > :04:56.internet. As you know, they are glued to satellite TV and internet.
:04:56. > :05:00.We estimate that 20 million people in Iran realised that in that first
:05:00. > :05:06.decade of the revolution thousands of people were executed simply
:05:06. > :05:11.because of their beliefs. It forced the regime to admit that these
:05:11. > :05:14.crimes had occurred. There is a propaganda piece which suggested
:05:14. > :05:19.that the supreme leader had tried to save as many political prisoners
:05:19. > :05:24.as he could. Now they have to try and position him as a human rights
:05:24. > :05:30.champion, which shows that once human rights and accountbility
:05:30. > :05:34.becomes one of the public discourse, leaders no matter how powerful
:05:34. > :05:38.become answerable. It wasn't a properly constituted process. You
:05:38. > :05:44.are open to the charge that the witnesses selected themselves
:05:44. > :05:49.because there is a clear nexus here between the political im--
:05:49. > :05:54.imperative. That's something that's dogged the internationally courts.
:05:54. > :05:58.That intermisaling, that grey area between what's duishal? In this
:05:58. > :06:03.case, there was no formal legal standing but it had legitimacy.
:06:03. > :06:10.Times when we are talking of the historical truth and shaping public
:06:10. > :06:14.opinion, is more important than a legal formal sort of status. There
:06:14. > :06:21.is always a delicate balance between law and politics. At the
:06:21. > :06:25.end of the day, the legal process is about ascertaining the truth
:06:25. > :06:29.through objective evidence, corroboration, it is a much Moore
:06:29. > :06:38.focused and rigorous bay of understanding phenomenon than let's
:06:38. > :06:42.say a discussion of history or politics or what have you. -- way.
:06:42. > :06:48.The tribunal was criticised, it was said some victims were excluded.
:06:49. > :06:53.They want to know who funded T it was a lie hi political thing. You
:06:53. > :06:56.muddyed the waters between what's judicial and what's political?
:06:56. > :07:03.there were 100 witnesses in a tribunal set up by the victims
:07:03. > :07:08.themselves and funded by them, which is a remarkable
:07:08. > :07:11.accomplishment of survivors and victims becoming activists and
:07:11. > :07:16.putting together a truth commission which I think is unprecedented.
:07:16. > :07:22.When you have thousands of victims, by some estimates, the number of
:07:22. > :07:30.executions are as high as 40,000 to 50,000 according to some professors.
:07:30. > :07:35.So you aren't nextly going to be selective in terms of only being I
:07:35. > :07:38.believe to represent a slice of the truth. This wasn't a tribunal that
:07:39. > :07:45.promised justice? It depends on what you mean by justice. It isn't
:07:45. > :07:49.just putting a defendant in the dock. When what was said by the
:07:49. > :07:55.Nuremberg judgement. How can you ever bring anybody to just nis for
:07:55. > :07:59.the crimes of that scale. By exposing the truth, giving the
:07:59. > :08:04.victims a voice, that in itself is the first step towards achieving
:08:04. > :08:08.justice. When you are dealing with mass crimes, I think transforming
:08:08. > :08:14.public values, exposing people to the truth, it's sometimes more
:08:15. > :08:18.important than putting this or that person in prison. Are the Western
:08:19. > :08:23.democracies right to pursue sanctions against Iran because of
:08:23. > :08:29.the nuclear programme? Will it simply strengthen the regime?
:08:29. > :08:33.have said that it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the nuclear
:08:33. > :08:38.issue. The problem in Iran is not potential nuclear capability, it's
:08:38. > :08:44.the nature of the regime. It's the regime that makes the potential of
:08:44. > :08:49.nuclear capability a threat. So until Iran is a democracy, until
:08:49. > :08:54.there is the rule of law and respect for human rights, Iran will
:08:54. > :08:56.continue to be a threat to Western interests and of course Western
:08:56. > :09:04.2356789 are not interested in what's best for the people, they
:09:04. > :09:09.are looking at their own interests. Let's look at the example of the
:09:09. > :09:15.dictatorships that pursue nuclear programs which they gave up under
:09:15. > :09:22.civilian rule. Let's look at South Africa under apartheid. A regime
:09:22. > :09:26.without democracy will by nature become military. Can the West
:09:26. > :09:31.afford to wait in reIran? I'm not sure what choice there is. The
:09:31. > :09:34.choices seem to be a military confrontation, which is an
:09:34. > :09:38.appalling choice, given what we have seen in the Middle East and
:09:38. > :09:44.the other choice is striking a bargain with Iran. And I think that
:09:44. > :09:50.the middle path has to be the empowerment of a civil society and
:09:50. > :09:55.conditioning inter internal acceptance. Policy makers see it as
:09:55. > :10:01.a soft issue for a group of naive activists. I think human rights is
:10:01. > :10:05.solution to the problem of Iran in the Middle East. Civil society is
:10:05. > :10:14.very strong in Iran, not as strong as the regime? Certainly, civil
:10:14. > :10:18.society has been many years in the making of Iran. Iran has the most
:10:18. > :10:24.vigorous and secular civil society in the Middle East. And we saw in
:10:24. > :10:28.2009 at least a year before the so called Arab Spring that the first
:10:28. > :10:32.place in which civil society really succeeded at least in shaking the
:10:32. > :10:37.pill alreadys of power was in Iran. And I can tell you that for many
:10:37. > :10:42.years when we were talking of civil society, decisions makers were
:10:42. > :10:46.mocking us in Washington and saying it's impossible to have the velvet
:10:46. > :10:53.revolutions witnessed in Islamic Middle East, because people just
:10:53. > :10:56.have to understand the complexities of an entire region that's going
:10:56. > :11:01.through historical transition from transition to democracy, that
:11:01. > :11:05.transition is going to be a complex, it's going to be messy in places.
:11:05. > :11:12.But I believe that Iran is the furtherest advanced in the Middle
:11:12. > :11:19.East. And just beneath the surface of this regime is a youthful
:11:19. > :11:23.generation which is post ideological and Iran has the
:11:23. > :11:27.transformation of the entire region. Dz the new President represent
:11:27. > :11:32.change? Well, there is some hope that the regime, for its own
:11:32. > :11:38.survival has to bring about certain reforms. I remain sceptical. One of
:11:38. > :11:42.the members of the cabinet, proposed members who was a member
:11:42. > :11:46.of the death commission in the 1980s executed thousands of people.
:11:46. > :11:51.That I don't think is sending the right message to the
:11:51. > :11:55.internationally commune to the people of Iran. But the point is
:11:55. > :12:01.that Iran cannot be ruled indefinitely through terror and
:12:01. > :12:04.torture and indimtation. At some point the regime will have to
:12:04. > :12:08.accommodate the demands of people for greater openness and
:12:08. > :12:11.accountability. Let me ask you about how you started in this human
:12:11. > :12:16.rights business. You joined the prosecutors office as a very young
:12:17. > :12:21.man. Why did it have such a big impact on you? From a personal
:12:21. > :12:25.point of view, once again, I think it goes back to the childhood
:12:25. > :12:29.experiences that open you to understanding human suffering and
:12:29. > :12:38.injustice. And in Bosnia, during the first week of my employment in
:12:38. > :12:43.the United Nations, I was deployed in the village of Mahudge, in which
:12:43. > :12:49.several hundreds of women and children had been brutally
:12:49. > :12:52.massacreed. That was a rather rude awakianing as my career as a
:12:52. > :12:56.internationally lawyer. It was a very intimate encounter with what
:12:56. > :13:02.human rights mean. And it was a very long time ago. 20 years ago,
:13:02. > :13:07.and those tries are taking place. The justice delayed is justice
:13:07. > :13:14.denied. Why is it all taking so long? Well, what's interesting, we
:13:14. > :13:18.had the Nuremberg model, which is an army which sits victorious and
:13:18. > :13:24.the allied powers could simply march down the streets of Berlin.
:13:24. > :13:31.That wasn't the case in the former uckshraufa. It was a situation in
:13:31. > :13:38.which there was a tribunal set up together with appeasement of those
:13:38. > :13:42.responsibility for ethnic cleansing. It was meant to promote
:13:42. > :13:47.reconciliation. It has done the opposite. All sides in the war have
:13:47. > :13:52.carefully selected the paths of the evidence that they want to believe,
:13:52. > :13:58.consistent with their own adopted narrative. It's had the opposite
:13:58. > :14:03.affect. It has further entrenched decision, hasn't it? Justice isn't
:14:03. > :14:08.necessarily about reconciliation. Reconciliation is an incidental
:14:08. > :14:13.biproduct of criminal justice. But we also have to realise that even
:14:13. > :14:23.in postwar Germany, it took at least one or two generations before
:14:23. > :14:28.
:14:28. > :14:32.the lessons of Nuremberg I think it is a mistake to think we are going
:14:32. > :14:42.to see that justice by prosecuting people from also is. That is what we
:14:42. > :14:46.were promised. Has it failed? would say we have to imagine what
:14:46. > :14:55.the world will look like if Slobodan Milosevic was still in power. If
:14:55. > :14:58.they were not held accountable and was still in positions of power.
:14:58. > :15:07.Although there are still very serious tensions, the removal of
:15:07. > :15:14.those warmongers and what we call the ethnic entrepreneurs that that
:15:14. > :15:20.institutionalised hatred. We have made peace and stability much more
:15:20. > :15:24.viable. This does not mean that people are going to embrace each
:15:24. > :15:30.other in some sort of shared humanity, but it does help create a
:15:30. > :15:40.context. You will remember the prosecution against Slobodan
:15:40. > :15:43.
:15:43. > :15:46.Milosevic. He said that things were not properly qualified. He said that
:15:47. > :15:49.international justice was apparent at first, but then I became cynical.
:15:49. > :15:54.Judges did not know what was happening in trials were being
:15:55. > :16:03.ruined. He also said that judges were under pressure to be
:16:03. > :16:06.technically evenhanded. -- ethnically evenhanded. There is a
:16:06. > :16:13.sort of romance with any kind of undertaking can which is
:16:13. > :16:17.unprecedented. In 1993, when the Yugoslav tribunal was set up, we did
:16:17. > :16:21.not have any other tribunal to look back at. Once you see the daily
:16:22. > :16:29.reality of what it means to organise a trial and a prosecution, you big
:16:29. > :16:35.end to move towards -- you begin to move towards a postromantic face.
:16:35. > :16:40.Could there be improvements? Absolutely. The quality of judges
:16:40. > :16:45.and the prosecution, I think many mistakes were made, including the
:16:45. > :16:51.idea that we can achieve justice by indicting people from all sides. The
:16:51. > :17:01.moral parity theory. We can see what the legacy of that has been. Under
:17:01. > :17:11.the tenure of the prom prosecutor -- former prosecutor, nine out of ten
:17:11. > :17:13.
:17:13. > :17:17.were acquitted. You defended a general from Croatia. He was charged
:17:17. > :17:22.with war crimes committed in 1995 against Serbs living in Croatia.
:17:22. > :17:27.Tens of thousands of Serbs fled their homes in operation he led. He
:17:27. > :17:32.evaded justice and went to the run for three years. And yet you
:17:32. > :17:38.defended him. To have any doubts? was asked to join the team. Came to
:17:38. > :17:44.the conclusion that he was innocent. Recently, when he was
:17:44. > :17:51.acquitted of all charges. What is important to bear in mind is that
:17:51. > :17:57.operation storm in August of 1995 occurred after the genocide, after
:17:58. > :18:07.the United Nations failed elite to protect the Vic The Whitlams. --
:18:07. > :18:14.protect the victim. The attack which allowed Croatia to reclaim the
:18:14. > :18:20.territory was investigated by two separate United Nations missions,
:18:20. > :18:25.which both concluded that no war crimes have been committed. This is
:18:25. > :18:28.not an argument that goes down in Serbia. They perceive that the
:18:28. > :18:35.release of the general was absolute proof that this tribunal is loaded
:18:35. > :18:40.against the Serbs. Except that three senior Serbs have also been
:18:40. > :18:47.acquitted. There is a lot of criticism levelled against the
:18:47. > :18:51.judges, all sorts of conspiracy theories. Think at the end of the
:18:51. > :18:56.day the blame lies squarely at the door of the prosecutors office. When
:18:56. > :19:01.you do not have sufficient evidence, you did not go to trial. Let alone
:19:01. > :19:05.in this sort of context, where these acquittals are going to create
:19:05. > :19:15.profound disillusionment. At the end of the day, the judges are not there
:19:15. > :19:15.
:19:15. > :19:19.to appease public opinion. Justice is about guilt or innocence based on
:19:19. > :19:24.objective evidence. Someone you are also working with now is the son of
:19:24. > :19:30.Colonel Gaddafi. You are representing the Libyan judicial
:19:30. > :19:36.system, arguing for the right of the Libyan courts to have the trial in
:19:36. > :19:40.Tripoli. Libyans used to be afraid of a police state, they are now
:19:40. > :19:46.afraid of the absence of state, without people to guard the people.
:19:46. > :19:51.A new conflict is building. The state does not really exist in
:19:51. > :19:56.Libya. How can he possibly get a fair trial from a country that is
:19:56. > :20:00.now run by independent, unaccountable militias? I am not at
:20:00. > :20:03.liberty to discuss this case which is pending. But I think the basic
:20:04. > :20:10.principle, which is in trade in trading the statue -- statute of the
:20:10. > :20:14.criminal Court, is that when courts are able to prosecute, they must be
:20:14. > :20:19.given primacy. The International Criminal Court is only there were
:20:19. > :20:25.national justice is not possible. But it is surely not possible in
:20:25. > :20:28.Libya under the current circumstances. It is a question of
:20:28. > :20:31.understanding that any society which is emerging from crimes against
:20:31. > :20:37.humanity is not going to have the judicial system of Sweden or Canada.
:20:37. > :20:47.It is going to be a society which needs judicial capacity building,
:20:47. > :20:48.
:20:48. > :20:53.sufficient time. I think the question can be put in the context
:20:53. > :20:59.of, for example, Rwanda. Despite the fact that there was a UN Tribunal
:20:59. > :21:04.for Rwanda, there were 130,000 people imprisoned after the 1994
:21:04. > :21:08.genocide. And the Rwandan judicial system, which is in a far worse
:21:08. > :21:14.situation than Libya, was given the opportunity over time to manage
:21:14. > :21:19.these cases will stop I think they have done a relatively decent job.
:21:19. > :21:26.Let me ask you about genocide. Genocide has become a trophy which
:21:26. > :21:29.Vista is the crown of ultimate importance and suffering on certain
:21:29. > :21:37.people. Do you think the word genocide is bandied about to freely?
:21:37. > :21:41.I remember after the Rwanda in 1994, the question was is this
:21:41. > :21:47.genocide or not? While the debate was taking place in the United
:21:47. > :21:52.States -- United Nations, 1 million people were slaughtered. In Sudan,
:21:52. > :21:57.Colin Powell said we are not going to deny the label of genocide as the
:21:57. > :22:03.Clinton administration did, we will call this buy rightful name, but we
:22:03. > :22:09.will still not do anything. It has been put in the hands of political
:22:09. > :22:15.activists? We have created this illusion of progress in the United
:22:15. > :22:21.Nations, in academic circles and other elite contexts, were we think
:22:21. > :22:24.that symbolic condemnation of mass atrocities somehow represents
:22:24. > :22:28.progress. And it becomes a substitute for more effective
:22:28. > :22:31.action. It does not really matter what you call the murder of 1
:22:31. > :22:38.million people in Rwanda or duffle, what is important is whether there
:22:38. > :22:47.is any meaningful action to protect those victims. Philip Sands says
:22:47. > :22:51.these courts are a world of spiders webs where big flies past freely and
:22:51. > :22:56.little ones get caught. We are not going to see American soldiers or
:22:56. > :23:01.British soldiers are reigned at the International Court. You look at the
:23:01. > :23:05.end date ease, they are all African. When are we going to see a system
:23:05. > :23:10.which will hold citizens of powerful countries under scrutiny, the weight
:23:10. > :23:15.they do citizens of smaller countries? I have a slightly
:23:15. > :23:18.different take on this. I remember the complaints that people had about
:23:18. > :23:22.the Yugoslav tribunal, having been established only because the victims
:23:22. > :23:26.were Europeans. Another complaint is that we are setting up all these
:23:26. > :23:31.courts in relation to Africa. I say good for the African people that
:23:31. > :23:39.there is an institution that is addressing the grave injustices data
:23:39. > :23:44.being committed. It remains a weakness. China, Russia and United
:23:44. > :23:48.States refused to sign up to the ICC. That is clearly a weakness. We
:23:48. > :23:54.need to understand the rise of global justice as an historical
:23:54. > :23:58.prices. 20 years ago, we did not have a single jurisdiction to
:23:58. > :24:06.publish -- punished genocidal murders. Today we have tribunal and
:24:06. > :24:12.a number of other instances where we have some justice rather than not at
:24:12. > :24:17.all. I must also say that it may be more fashionable to condemn the
:24:17. > :24:21.Americans for war crimes, but I think the biggest source of