Prosecuting the Powerful: War Crimes and the Battle for Justice

Could we ever see Vladimir Putin in the dock for his crimes? What about a Western ally like Benjamin Netanyahu? Putting a country's leader on trial once seemed unthinkable. But as journalist and human rights advocate Steve Crawshaw describes in Prosecuting the Powerful - a blend of vivid reportage and gripping history - a series of remarkable changes in recent years means that, despite many challenges, both scenarios are now a possibility.

Drawing on his on-the-ground reporting from the front lines of justice in Ukraine and Israel, as well as earlier encounters with Serbian leader Slobodan Milo evic and other war criminals, Crawshaw tells the story of the long struggle for accountability. Beginning with the origins of the Geneva Conventions in the 19th century, the book travels via Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" and pressed for its punishment, and the Syrian police photographer who helped put a torturer behind bars, up to the fierce arguments today over who exactly the International Criminal Court in The Hague should hold accountable for war crimes.

Survivors are determined to achieve change. As Crawshaw argues, Western double standards cannot be allowed to tip the scales of justice.

Steve Crawshaw has written and worked on human rights and justice for more than thirty years. He was a journalist at Granada Television before joining the Independent at launch in 1986, where his roles included Russia and East Europe Editor during the east European revolutions and Balkan wars,then Germany bureau chief and chief foreign correspondent. In 2002, he joined Human Rights Watch as UK director and then UN advocacy director in New York. In 2010 he joined Amnesty International as international advocacy director and then Director of the Office of the Secretary General. In 2018 he became policy and advocacy director at Freedom from Torture. His previous books are Goodbye to the USSR (1992), Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century(2004), Small Acts of Resistance (with John Jackson, foreword by Vaclav Havel, 2010) and Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief (foreword by Ai Weiwei, 2017). He studied Russian and German at the universities of Oxford and St Petersburg, and lived in Poland from 1978 to 1981.

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