The Trial of Vladimir Putin

This book is essential reading for all who wish for a better world.

his prison in the Arctic Circle), change may come as it did with Milošević, and Putin may end up, years from now, shuffling into the dock like some old Nazi. But the dock of which court, and charged with what offence? The world must now prepare for this possibility and be ready to put him on trial for committing the greatest crime, causing the most casualties, since the Nazi blitzkriegs of the Second World War.
There is another reason for preparing a trial, namely the prospect of conducting it in absentia – without Putin being physically present. Such trials are frowned upon by many Anglo-American lawyers, who say they are not trials at all because a defendant by definition cannot contest the evidence or instruct counsel. But for all that, they are permitted in France and many other European countries – and most importantly in Ukraine. The UN’s Human Rights Committee, arbiter of international fair trial standards, has accepted that in absentia trials can conform to such standards if ‘accused persons, although informed of the proceedings sufficiently in advance, decline to exercise their right to be present’. This is subject to a condition that there must be a retrial should the absent defendant later appear to contest their conviction. A conviction of an absent defendant will give some solace to victims of the crime, although by no means as much as if they see