Geoffrey Robertson, QC

Geoffrey Robertson, QC

High-profile QC's authority takes a bit of a bashing

By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor

Daily Telegraph 14/03/2004

 

Not long after Geoffrey Robertson, QC, was elected president of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, I bumped into him at the opening ceremony of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

"I suppose I should call you 'Judge' now," I said, after greeting him by his first name as usual.

"You can call me President," he replied, not entirely tongue in cheek.

This elevated status was the culmination of a career in which the QC made rather too many appearances on television to be considered an obvious choice for the English High Court bench. For a lawyer who set up his own chambers at the age of 44, being president of a court - wherever it might be - was clearly preferable to a more lowly judicial appointment.

Now 57, he will be relieved to find his fellow judges have allowed him to stay in Sierra Leone. The QC took to his new part-time post with enthusiasm, evendesigning the judges' robes.

However, his authority has been severely weakened. He has agreed not to hear any cases involving three individual members of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, after his comments about the RUF.

Justice Robertson must now be regretting that he was so explicit. This is particularly so because he was chosen as president to set an example to those from less privileged backgrounds.

As he says in the book, the court "gives a predominant role to experienced international judges and prosecutors, but ensures the involvement of local lawyers who will be educated and (hopefully) inspired by participating".

After cutting his teeth as a young lawyer on the Oz trial at the Old Bailey in 1971, he developed a strong media practice, defending the plays such as The Romans in Britain and newspapers including Gay News and the Guardian.

His works - which include Obscenity, People Against the Press and Does Dracula Have Aids? - are less likely to be found in airport bookstalls than those of his wife, Kathy Lette.

With an accent that betrays only a hint of his native Australia, he cuts a dashing, slightly old-fashioned figure in court - as much the image of a traditional English barrister as Leo McKern's Rumpole.

He represented David Shayler, the former MI5 officer, and led for the defence in the Matrix Churchill case which collapsed in 1992, leading to the Scott inquiry on arms to Iraq.

As a QC, he appeared in "hundreds" of Caribbean death sentence appeals at the Privy Council in London. He prosecuted Hastings Banda of Malawi and defended dissidents detained by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore.

Before his appointment to the Sierra Leone court, he conducted missions to South Africa and Vietnam on behalf of Amnesty International and was counsel to the Antiguan Royal Commission which exposed a plot to arm the Medellin cocaine cartel.

The most authoritative assessment of Geoffrey Robertson's legal skills was delivered by Lord Scott last July. The QC had advised the Guardian to challenge the Treason Felony Act 1848, which apparently makes it an offence to call for the abolition of the monarchy.

It was "plain as a pikestaff" that republicans were not at risk of prosecution, said Lord Scott, ordering the newspaper to pay the Government's costs.

Mr Robertson was "a very good lawyer," the judge added. "But you do not have to be a very good lawyer to know that to advocate the abolition of the monarchy and its replacement by a republic by peaceful and constitutional means will lead neither to prosecution nor to conviction.

"All you need to be is a lawyer with commonsense."