A History of Political Trials
John Laughland
Peter Lang, 315pp, £12.99
This is not a history of political trials because it does not consider Stalin’s show trials. It is a partial account of a selection of trials of heads of state. Cases are drawn from entirely different historical contexts so that problems of category difference abound. There seems little or no new research in this book. Each chapter is a workmanlike marshalling of the facts, though experts on the cases might dispute some of the conclusions drawn, chapters on Charles I and Quisling seemed especially weak.
The chapter on Saddam Hussein made clear the point of the book: intervention is wrong. Saddam’s trial is criticised in all the usual ways and there is a huge amount to criticise about the conduct of that trial and the operation of the ICC in other contexts.
The general message is the conventional anti-human rights one that state sovereignty – indeed in this text, sovereigns themselves – are sacred objects.
It is not a defence of the mass murder committed by dictators; it is a defence of the sovereign right of nation states to inflict cruelty and death upon their own citizens with impunity.
Why should heads of state enjoy impunity from prosecution if they commit crimes against humanity? Why should failed states engaging or having engaged in mass murder continue to enjoy the same legal status as consolidated democracies?
According to Laughland, impunity should exist because the procedures of international tribunals and trials have not always been up to legal scratch and therefore they amount to victor’s justice.
The more I read the more uneasy I became. What makes this an offensive little book is the complete failure to grasp that it was not victors who sought justice in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and do so to this day in Iraq, but victims. The category difference Laughland most clearly fails to understand is that between genocide and other crimes.