Geoffrey Nice

Life and career

Early life

Nice's family home was in Catford, England, where he attended St Dunstan's College, and later Keble College, Oxford. He became a barrister in 1971 and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1990. From 1984 to 2014 he was a part-time judge at the Old Bailey. Nice was made a Knight Bachelor in 2007. In 2009, he was named Vice-Chair of the Bar Standards Board. In 2012 he was appointed the Professor of Law at Gresham College, a position formerly occupied by Baroness Deech.

Politics

In the 1983 United Kingdom general election and 1987 United Kingdom general election, he was the unsuccessful Social Democratic Party candidate for Dover.

Prosecutor career

Nice has been involved with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He was lead prosecutor at the 2002 trial of Slobodan Milošević in The Hague and initiated the prosecution's initial case of linking atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia to Milosevic. His contract in that case ended in 2006. He prosecuted the ICTY cases of the Bosnian Croat Dario Kordić and the successful prosecution of Goran Jelisić. Nice has been active in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and in pro bono work for victims groups. His practice includes human rights/public law and personal injury.

In February 2009 he represented Omar al-Bashir, and tried but failed to block the ICC cases against Bashir; the ICC issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir the following month on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In August 2010, journalist Judith Armatta published a book titled Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic. In December 2010, Nice reviewed this book on London Review of Books. In his review, Nice criticized the ICTY for its decisions during the trial of Milosevic. Nice alleged that the prosecutor of the ICTY, Carla Del Ponte, had compromised with Milosevic, which then led to a failure of Bosnia-Herzegovina in their genocide case against Serbia in February 2007.

Uyghurs

Nice was the chair of the China Tribunal, independently initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC). The tribunal focused on the issue of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China and delivered its Final Judgment in January 2020. Nice was asked to become the head of 2021 Uyghur Tribunal by the World Uyghur Congress to examine evidence regarding the ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people by the Government of China.

In 2021, in retaliation for sanctions issued against Chinese officials by the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, the People's Republic of China issued sanctions against Nice that banned him from entering territory that the country controls or from doing business with Chinese persons. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement that these sanctions were issued due to Nice discussing the persecution of Uyghurs in China, which the statement termed as "lies and disinformation".

Gaza-Israel

In 2015, Nice chaired a panel discussion at Gresham College on the Gaza-Israel conflict to discuss the possibility of war crimes being committed.

The Geoffrey Nice Foundation

The Geoffrey Nice Foundation was founded by Nice in 2014. It aims to promote a multidisciplinary approach to the study and teaching of International Criminal Justice and uses methodologies from law, history, sociology, political science, and international relations to address issues related to political violence and mass atrocities.

Judicial career

In 2009, a conviction Nice had presided over was ordered quashed and retried, after a Privy Council Appeal found his handling of the case had resulted in an unfair hearing. One reason that Nice was criticized by the Privy Council for his was his unfair handling in the trial of a St. Helier-based accountant Peter Michel. Michel had been accused of ten counts of money laundering in 2007, and was sentenced to six years in prison. In 2009, however, the Privy Council quashed the conviction against Michel, and said that Nice had been hostile, sarcastic, mocking, and patronising toward the defendant in an excessive number of inappropriate interventions during the trial, and that such action had rendered the trial unfair. In the same report, the Jersey Evening Post claimed that the actions could have cost the Jersey taxpayers "millions of pounds." In 2012, two members of the General Council of the Bar, Desmond Browne KC and Tim Dutton KC, challenged the Privy Council's decision to overturn the conviction against Michel.

References

References

1. "Justice for All and How to Achieve It – Geoffrey Nice Foundation".
2. Keble Association (1965) ''Keble College Address List''; p. 88
3. [https://uyghurtribunal.com/who-we-are/ "Who We Are"]
4. "Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC | Gresham College". Gresham.ac.uk.
5. (2002-02-13). "EUROPE | Profile: Sir Geoffrey Nice". BBC News.
6. (11 April 2014). "Advocacy: 'as if' the Person Represented, or 'for' Them? - Sir Geoffrey Nice QC".
7. "The crisis in legal aid and the urgent need for action".
8. No reference
9. [https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-03/09-110 "Prosecution Objection to the Continued Representation of Victims a/1646/10 and a/1647/10 by Messrs Geoffrey Nice and Rodney Dixon "]
10. Nice, Geoffrey. (December 16, 2010). "Del Ponte's Deal". London Review of Books.
11. "Judgement, section 17". China Tribunal.
12. Ochab, Ewelina U.. (17 June 2019). "The China Tribunal Pronounced Its Verdict On Organ Harvesting In China".
13. Wintour, Patrick. (26 March 2021). "China imposes sanctions on UK MPs, lawyers and academic in Xinjiang row". [[The Guardian]].
14. (26 March 2021). "China sanctions British MPs, lawyers, businesses for Xinjiang 'disinformation'". [[South China Morning Post]].
15. (26 March 2021). "Uighurs: China bans UK MPs after abuse sanctions". [[BBC News]].
16. "Gaza-Israel: Panel Discussion".
17. "Geoffrey Nice Foundation – Law, History, Politics and Society in the Context of Mass Atrocities".
18. (2011-11-19). "Privy Council Appeal No 0075 of 2008".
19. (2009-11-06). "'Unfair' judge costs millions « Jersey Evening Post". Jersey Evening Post.
20. (2012-06-28). "Is it only judges that are condemned without the right to be heard?".