The openDemocracy website carries an extract from Geoffrey Robertson's book The Tyrannicide Brief. In addition, Robertson talks to Charlie Devereux about why he considers John Cooke (who prosecuted Charles I of England) a hero of our time and what can be applied from his story to the prosecutions of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
Charlie Devereux: What parallels do you draw between Charles I's trial and Saddam Hussein's?Geoffrey Robertson: You have a dictator and an absolute monarch, and a war waged by both men against their own people, civil wars that were waged to prop up their power and their right to absolute rule. Saddam Hussein was charged with summary execution. In the case of Charles, the evidence suggested that he supervised the torture of prisoners of war. It is fair to say that the parallels are by no means exact; by the standards of European rulers of the age, Charles's alleged crimes are less brutal than those alleged against Saddam Hussein.
