Lawyer shames government at human rights ceremonies

There is something unsettling about the parade of Nobel Prize winners and pious statements celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here this week. Just 10 days ago, the French rolled out the red carpet for more than a few African heads of state with massacres to their names.

Rereading the declaration, you realise that it represents a subversive document for governments because it is meant to shelter the individual from the power of the state and, for the first time, it raised the principle of humanitarian intervention above national sovereignty.

After the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) filed a suit against the ruler of former Zaire, Mr LaurentDesire Kabila two weeks ago, President Chirac was shamed into publicly snubbing the Congolese dictator.

Media pressure worked again yesterday, when the Elysee invited the Dalai Lama to a lunch for Nobel Prize winners after it was revealed that he would be overlooked so as not to offend China.

Mr William Bourdon, the secretary-general of the FIDH, is a human rights defender who will have little time for the ceremonies. The 42-year-old lawyer has too much work, even if he believes the commemoration is important to influence public opinion.

Mr Bourdon has conducted 30 FIDH missions to train human rights workers abroad and heads international jurisdiction at the FIDH. He was the one who made Mr Kabila's stay in Paris so uncomfortable.

Last summer, he filed suits on behalf of five French families who lost relatives to the rule of the former Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet. Although it is unlikely Gen Pinochet will ever stand trial in France, he might be questioned by the French investigating magistrate if Britain sends him to Spain.

The families in the Pinochet case came to Mr Bourdon because he had pioneered legal action in France against international human rights abusers. In 1992, he was the first to file a suit on behalf of Bosnian victims of Serb atrocities.

Three years later, a Rwandan priest, Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, was arrested in France, on Mr Bourdon's initiative, on suspicion of inciting massacres against Tutsis. "It was the first time that a French judge applied the 1984 New York Convention against torture," he says. "It requires signatory states to arrest torturers who transit their territory."

The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, has said it is more likely someone will be tried for one murder than that a man responsible for the deaths of 100,000 will be brought to justice. He speaks of a "Richter scale of horror" and says that only certain crimes - crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and torture - should be prosecuted internationally.

Mr Bourdon is determined that heads of state should not enjoy immunity. "Article 24 of the statutes of the future permanent International Court says the principle of immunity for heads of state is not applicable for the most serious crimes," he explains.

The statutes were adopted in Rome on July 17th, 1998 and have yet to be ratified by a single country. It will be a long struggle, Mr Bourdon admits. "But the direction taken by international law is irreversible, definitive. It means the world will no longer be a sanctuary for the worst human rights abusers and that the international community will be forced to arrest them more and more often. Maybe it will reduce the amount of cynicism and raison d'etat in international relations."

Mr Bourdon is also involved in some of the most publicised legal cases in France. He represents photographer Nicolas Arsov, one of the "Pont de l'Alma 10" who were placed under investigation for manslaughter following the death of Princess Diana.

The case is nearing completion and he and other lawyers are about to request that proceedings against the photographers be dropped.

"What I said a year ago - that it was a car accident caused by high speed and drink - has been proven," he says. If the photographers were tried and sentenced, he adds, "it would obviously be seen as a legal restriction on the freedom of the press."

Last month, Mr Bourdon convinced a French court that another of his clients, the former MI5 agent Mr David Shayler, had committed a political act - not a crime - when he revealed British intelligence secrets in newspaper interviews. To the annoyance of London, Britain's extradition request was rejected and Mr Shayler was freed after three months in prison.

But doesn't the fact that Mr Shayler received tens of thousands of pounds for the interviews undermine his claim to have acted politically? "Not at all," Mr Bourdon says. "In Britain it is common to receive payment for interviews - that was not the reason for what he did, and he is living in precarious conditions. David Shayler's behaviour was motivated by his disgust at the actions of the British secret service. Criticising institutions in the press is at the heart of what French law considers a political offence."

According to a British report drawn up by a London police commissioner, Mr Martin Morrissey, and leaked to Le Monde, Mr Shayler is believed to possess a 35-page, top-secret document on British intelligence and the IRA in Northern Ireland.