Global brief to support embattled lawyers

Brian Schuster examines how international groups protest at the rising risk of persecution

Would you represent a client if it would put your life at risk? Fortunately, this is not a dilemma many UK lawyers face.

But Amnesty International, the International Bar Association (IBA) and the Law Society say they are seeing an increasing number of cases of lawyers who are being targeted because of the causes they represent.

Amnesty's International Legal Network head Jonathan O'Donoghue says 'there is not a week that goes by without a case being put on my desk.

It's a recurring problem.'

Lawyers face intimidation in places ranging from Guatemala, and Zimbabwe to Nepal and Guinea.

The president of the Brazilian Bar Association and 130 other lawyers recently escaped injury despite a bomb exploding during a ceremony for new members in the state of Espirito Santo.

This was linked to allegations of corruption in the state made by lawyers.

While Mr O'Donoghue says 'we don't have exact figures', he reports that Amnesty receives several new cases each week, describing various forms and degrees of harassment and intimidation designed to put pressure on lawyers to drop their clients.

'The classic case is a lawyer who has an unpopular client or is involved in an unpopular case.

Lawyers get involved and are themselves branded as possible targets.

They become identified with the cause of their clients or the case of their clients,' he says.

Amnesty is not the only organisation to see an upturn in reports of persecution.

'We are quite swamped,' says an IBA officer dealing with cases that threaten the independence of the legal profession, the rule of law and human rights.

And Mel James, secretary to the Law Society's international human rights committee, reports a similar situation (see [2002] Gazette, 12 September, 6).

The three organisations have a similar approach in dealing with these reports.

They send out letters of intervention aimed at reminding governments of their obligations under international law.

This is a classic Amnesty approach, and one that the Society is increasingly adopting to deal with these cases in tandem with seminars and press releases aimed at publicising the issues.

Ms James's background as a former Amnesty campaigner is perhaps part of the reason for this.

But the increasing number of reports and the raised profile of human rights both internationally in the UK with the introduction of the Human Rights Act are perhaps also contributing factors.

Amnesty is now trying to expand its international legal network.

Mr O'Donoghue says: 'In the last few years we've been looking at improving our network of 5,000 lawyers in 40 countries.'

However, Amnesty has faced resource problems within its international legal network, which resulted in the UK lawyers' arm being shut down.

But Mr O'Donoghue says the group is about to be revived.

'We are focused on engaging the international legal community', he adds.

In addition to letters of intervention, the IBA also sends high-profile missions to countries about which it has particular concern, for example, last year's operation in Zimbabwe and more recent missions to Nepal and Malawi.

Bar Council chairman David Bean QC last week added his voice to that of the South African Bar and Chief Justice to condemn the arrest and detention of retired Zimbabwe judge Mr Justice Fergus Blackie as an attack on the independence of judges and rule of law.

The Society has just sent a letter to Rwandan President Paul Kagame after law student Boniface Rukumbuzi was arrested and forcibly returned to the Congo with seven others (see [2002] Gazette, 26 September, 6).

The Society maintains that they have been beaten, are in need of urgent medical attention, and are at serious risk of further ill-treatment or torture.

The Society is also concerned about Guatemala, where 200,000 people have disappeared or been killed.

Threats, intimidation and attacks against the legal profession are 'commonplace' and lawyers and judges investigating and prosecuting past human rights violations are particularly vulnerable, says the working party.

It is particularly concerned about lawyer Roberto Romero, whose family has been forced to leave the country following death threats text- messaged to his son Manuel Gerardo's mobile telephone.

Mr Romero is trying a high- profile political case following the murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack.

A sergeant was found guilty of the murder, after 13 judges were replaced in his trial.

Intimidation ranged from death threats to a grenade being lobbed through a judge's window.

Mr Romero is now prosecuting a general and two colonels accused with ordering the murder.

He has received death threats and shots reportedly have been fired at his home in Guatemala City.

This story may seem as unlikely as the plot of a Hollywood film, but these are real cases involving sinister underground conspiracies with lawyers defending human rights at the playing a starring role.

But the plight of lawyers abroad may seem a world away from the experience of those working in the City of London or at a Grimsby high-street practice.

A mere sniff of a death threat on a lawyer would no doubt cause an uproar, and would soon be nipped in the bud, one might imagine.

Ms James says: 'We can say quite simply that although there are plenty of commercial and other pressures on lawyers here, it's nothing like the problems faced by lawyers in other jurisdictions.'

But although these organisations agree that they are most concerned about far-flung Third World countries, after the attacks in the US last year, the desperation of militant organisations cannot be dismissed and the safety of living in the secure West can no longer be regarded as a foolproof security blanket.

Ms James points out that Northern Ireland, where lawyer Rosemary Nelson was murdered, is not that far away.

The regimes topping the lists of worried human rights organisations do vary, as does the type of intimidation being faced by lawyers in different jurisdictions.

'You see different patterns within different countries,' says O'Donoghue: 'The main target is the average lawyer on the ground.

Torture is common in Nepal where lawyers are detained incommunicado.

In Equatorial Guinea there are some cases at the moment.

A group of 144 persons has been arrested and accused of trying to overthrow the government.

Lawyers were either charged as part of the group or faced separate charges, such as defamation of the head of state.'

The International Commission of Jurists' legal adviser Ian Seiderman says: 'I can't say if it's any more or less globally, but you do see trends, for example in Zimbabwe since the Lord Chief Justice was forced to resign.

There is a rash of information coming from Syria at the moment.' Haytham al-Maleh, a human rights lawyer in Syria, was jailed for seven years in the 1980s for criticising the government and representing political prisoners, and has recently been the subject of arbitrary disciplinary actions by the Damascus branch of the Bar Association.

Amnesty International has taken up his case, and has urged the Bar Association to take a stand against the harassment and threatening of human rights lawyers, and the curtailment of their freedom of speech.

But like Mr O'Donoghue, Mr Seiderman says he is also concerned about 'structural trends' in developed countries as well as straightforward violence.

He is particularly concerned that the US is setting up extraordinary military courts to try terrorist cases rather then leaving them to ordinary courts.

'It's worrying in itself and sets a bad example.

It's hard to tell countries trying to reform when they can point to a superpower or European countries doing these things,' he says.

Mr O'Donoghue suggests there has been an increase in the amount and severity of security legislation in certain states since the September 11 attacks on the US, which is contributing to the risk.

Post-9/11 terrorist inspired legislation sits uncomfortably with the now substantial body of international human rights legislation that has been established in response to the vogue for civil liberties.

Mr Seiderman recommends that lawyers should contact an international lawyers' group if they are threatened with violence or have grounds to suspect judicial corruption and explain the facts.

'If there is a pattern of abuse we may send a fact-finding mission or trial observation,' he says.

In the end, it is up to individual lawyers to decide whether they can bear the heat.

They have to weigh the personal risk to their safety with their professional obligations and ethical considerations.

But they are not fighting the cause alone.

Although they are clearly in the line of fire, there is a growing international support network willing to lend their support.

'Most of the lawyers for whom we appeal are a rare breed of people who really feel at home doing their job,' says Ms James.

She suggests that individual UK lawyers who want to show their support can 'write the occasional letter'.

But does all this letter writing really help? Mr Seiderman admits that in some places it can back-fire by antagonising governments, but that the letters can be useful in individual cases where a lawyer is working alone or if a judge is suspected of corruption.

Lawyers at the forefront of the defence of human rights should take heart.

They are not alone.

Brian Schuster is a freelance journalist