PHILLIPPE SANDS QC, Professor of Law at University College London and Barrister, Matrix Chambers
Torture Team: Abuse and Accountability
Date/Time: 10th March 2010, 17:30 - 18:30
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Philippe Sands will address the circumstances in which the United States embraced the use of torture in the aftermath of 9/11, focusing on the role of the most senior lawyers in the Bush Administration and issues of individual accountability for international crime. Criminal investigations are now underway in Britain and Spain, and in August 2009 US Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor to examine related issues.
Philippe Sands QC is a barrister and law professor. As a barrister at Matrix Chambers he practices in public international law. He appears regularly before English and international courts. His cases include ex parte Augusto Pinochet (House of Lords, counsel for Human Rights Watch), A & Others (Belmarsh detention case and admissibility of torture evidence case, both House of Lords) and Democratic Republic of Congo v Uganda (ICJ, counsel for DRC). He served as an adviser to the delegation of Samoa in the negotiations of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome, 1998), and was appointed as amicus curiae by the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone to make submissions on Head of State immunity under international law (Prosecutor v Charles Taylor).As Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College London he has published a number of academic books. He is author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (Penguin and Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (Penguin and Viking, 2005, 2006), which inspired a stage play (Called to Account, Tricycle Theatre) and a television film (The Trial of Tony Blair, Channel 4). He writes regularly for the press and serves as a commentator for the BBC, CNN and other radio and television producers.
