Defending the Rule of Law: Interview with Kingsley Abbott* Jacqui Thompson
Accountability, he travels widely, most recently to Colombia, Bangladesh, Geneva and Tunisia. The work has been highly challenging. When he first joined the Cambodia Tribunal, the team members were essentially designing from scratch the rules of procedure for their Tribunal, including the administration, logistics and the “how to” of the investigation. Although they could obtain guidance from the procedures of some other tribunals, each tribunal has its own challenges that requires a new response. Abbott was a legal adviser to the investigation team, which faced the initial challenge of how to begin to analyse the massive amount of evidence and information. There were dozens and dozens of crime sites, with the whole spectrum of international crimes that had allegedly occurred in the country over the course of several years including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.2
From scuba diving instructor to international criminal and human rights law might seem an unusual career progression, but this was nonetheless the path that Kingsley Abbott took. He began his career in the normal way, working for a New Zealand law firm as a junior solicitor. He then was fortunate to move to the bar where he worked mainly with Stuart Grieve QC and Antonia Fisher QC. But as he approached 30, he felt the time had come for him to move on to the next level and he had to make a call whether that would be in New Zealand or overseas.
Abbott’s background at the New Zealand criminal bar proved invaluable. He was working with a relatively young team, many of whom had academic backgrounds but little or no practical experience. Abbott did not have an academic background in international criminal or human rights law but his time working with Stuart Grieve helped provided his team with some of the solutions for organising and analysing the evidence, creating the case file, and ultimately issuing indictments.
He planned to travel slowly overland to look for work at the UK bar, but after a stint relaxing on beaches in Indonesia and teaching others about his passion of scuba diving, he secured an internship with the special tribunal that had been set up by agreement between the United Nations and the Cambodian government to investigate and prosecute members of the Khmer Rouge for their actions during the mid to late 1970s1.
At the end of his three-month internship, Abbott was offered a consultancy with the UN which later translated into a full-time position. After three and a half years in Cambodia, he moved to the Hague for a couple of years where he was a Trial Counsel in the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.3 That tribunal, the first established to prosecute international terrorism, was also in the pre-trial investigation phase and was investigating and building a case file on those responsible for the 2005 political assassination of the former Prime Minister
This was the start of his career in international criminal and human rights law. Since then, he has worked for two special tribunals for the United Nations and is now celebrating his fifth year of working for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). He has spent much of the last 13 years in Asia, and in his new role as Senior Legal Adviser for Global Redress &
This Tribunal is a hybrid tribunal with a domestic arm and an international one. For more information see http://www.unakrt-online.org/about-us and https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en(accessed 31 March 2019) 2 For a fuller description of the years of the Khmer Rouge regime see https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/about-eccc (accessed 31 March 2019) 3 https://www.stl-tsl.org/en/ (accessed 31 March 2019) 1
www.nzbar.org.nz
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