Justice and the Enemy

October 3, 2011
Shawcross (Deliver Us from Evil), son of the chief British prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, considers the legal and political issues surrounding the detention and trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The Nuremberg trials, which introduced the concept of “crimes against humanity,” became the precedent for postwar justice, highlighting the difficulty of properly prosecuting “those who commit hideous and unprecedented crimes.” Using the judgment of Justice Robert Jackson, the lead American prosecutor at Nuremberg, as a guide, Shawcross explores what form of justice the al-Qaeda defendants should receive, the pros and cons of military versus federal courts, the admissibility of evidence gained under the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and the differing policies of the Bush and Obama administrations regarding “unlawful combatants,” the Geneva Conventions, Guantánamo, and justice. He takes liberal-leaning groups like the ACLU to task for their zeal in defending (and delaying the military trials) of “Islamists who wish to destroy western society,” and finds his native Britain becoming a dangerous breeding ground for Islamist extremism among young Muslims. Concluding that prisoners will have far greater right in military tribunals now than they did at Nuremberg, this thoughtful, passionately right-wing study underscores the thorny difficulties the U.S. has faced in bringing the September 11 attackers to court.

November 1, 2011

Well-known journalist Shawcross (Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia), son of Britain's lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg war crime trials, undertakes the task of defending the U.S. prosecution of al-Qaeda detainees, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Using the Nuremberg trials and the opinions of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the trials, as his lodestar, he finds support for military commissions to try those accused of being terrorists. Shawcross begins with the origins of the Nuremberg trials and moves to the history of al-Qaeda, then the legal underpinnings of the military tribunals. Given stateless actors not bound by rules of war, he argues that the use of drones and enhanced interrogation techniques is lawful. While the U.S. government has faced great difficulties handling the prosecution of terrorists, it has, according to the author, Nuremberg as a useful precedent. VERDICT What distinguishes the book is the quality of the writing and analysis; regardless of their personal political views, readers will find Shawcross makes a nuanced argument. Clear, briskly written, and persuasive--of interest to those on all sides of the issue.--Harry Charles, St. Louis

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October 15, 2011
A controversial intervention into the ongoing political and legal argument about whether and how to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators for their role in the 9/11 attack. British writer and commentator Shawcross (The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, 2009, etc.) takes a no-holds-barred approach to the issues involved in putting the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 on trial for their crimes. His argument is embedded in parallels concerning World War II and the application of justice to Nazi war criminals. Shawcross' father was the British prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal; at that time there were differences of opinion among the allies. Churchill favored summary execution of top Nazis, without recourse to trial. Stalin proposed eliminating the top 50,000 officials. Truman was in favor of the trials and appointed Robert Jackson to represent the U.S. Shawcross believes that the Nuremberg trials provide a precedent for the current situation, and he argues that military commissions, or tribunals, are well established in U.S. law. A key precedent, he writes, was provided by Ex Parte Quirin 1942, in which German spies were to be tried by military commission. Justice Jackson wrote one of the opinions and upheld tribunals as within the war powers of the presidency. Shawcross similarly supports the Bush administration's decisions on illegal combatants and believes that Mohammed, waterboarded more than 180 times, was not necessarily a victim of torture. Sure to cause further heated debate on the Mohammed situation and other similar scenarios.

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December 1, 2011
An international-affairs journalist who has written on the Cambodian conflict (Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, 1979; rev. ed., 2002) and humanitarian intervention (Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, 2000) as well as an authorized biography of the Queen Mum (The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, 2009), Shawcross here addresses the timely and thorny question of how best to prosecute international terrorists. He is the son of Hartley Shawcross, lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg military tribunals, and it is perhaps not surprising that those trials represent for him an imperfect yet ultimately persuasive precedent for how justice may be achieved in prosecuting members of al-Qaeda. Reviewing the details of various al-Qaeda-related threats and the responses of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, Shawcross remains generally sympathetic to the dispositions toward which the U.S. has stumbled and found its way in the last decade and is convinced that military tribunals are preferable to criminal trials in the federal courts. Readers seeking a lengthier and more nuanced legal analysis may prefer Benjamin Wittes' Law and the Long War (2009), but those seeking a more policy-focused review of recent developments should start with this work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)