Ben Emmerson

Emmerson is currently an Appeals Chamber Judge of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals sitting on the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has previously served as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Special Adviser to the Appeals Chamber of the ECCC (the UN-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia).

In his legal practice, Emmerson has acted for a number of foreign Governments in connection with international armed conflicts, including the Governments of Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia and Ukraine. He has also represented several current and former heads of State and other political figures, including Mohammed Nasheed (former President of the Maldives); Ramush Haradinaj (former Prime Minister of Kosovo); Arseny Yatsenuk (former Prime Minister of Ukraine); and Carles Puigdemont (ex President of Catalonia). He has appeared in numerous cases in the European Court of Human Rights, acting for and against the Government of the United Kingdom and other Council of Europe Member States, and has appeared in the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and other international courts and tribunals.

Emmerson's former clients include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (in connection with an attempt to extradite him to Sweden); GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun (who was prosecuted under the UK's Official Secrets Acts following the 2003 invasion of Iraq); and Marina Litvinenko (the wife of former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006 using the radioactive isotope Polonium 210). Emmerson also represented Abdelbasset al-Megrahi (the Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the Lockerbie bombing) in his appeal against conviction in Scotland, and subsequently acted for Abdullah Al-Senussi, the former head of national security to Colonel Gaddafi, in proceedings before the International Criminal Court.

Within the UK, Emmerson has been a deputy High Court judge, a master of the Bench of the Middle Temple, a visiting professor of international law and security at the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. In 2016, he was awarded an honorary PhD from Bristol University.