Agnes Callamard: Investigating the Khashoggi and Soleimani killings
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are international laws and norms designed to prohibit states from bumping off their enemies, internal or external. But look around the world, and its clear those laws are being violated, often with impunity. Stephen Sackur interviews Agnes Callamard, a renowned human rights investigator who serves as the UN Special Rapporteur on extra judicial killing. Given the scale of the problem, have her investigations become an exercise in futility?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:06.7 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Hard Talk on |
| 0:12.8 | the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has proved herself to be one of the |
| 0:18.0 | most determined and effective human rights defenders in the world. |
| 0:22.9 | Over the course of a career that's taken in stints at Amnesty International and Article 19, |
| 0:28.9 | she now serves as UN rapporteur on extrajudicial killing. |
| 0:34.1 | Agnes Kalimar has acquired a reputation for forensic research and an unwillingness to be |
| 0:40.1 | cowed by state-sponsored intimidation. Nonetheless, her work on cases such as the murder of Saudi |
| 0:46.9 | journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul and the targeted U.S. killing of Iranian general |
| 0:52.8 | Qasem Soleimani does raise a fundamental question. |
| 0:57.1 | Who, in the international community, is prepared to hold states to account? |
| 1:02.2 | Is impunity the norm, despite all the fact-finding and troubling evidence presented by investigators like Anyas Kalimar? |
| 1:10.7 | Well, she joins me now on the line from New York City. |
| 1:13.9 | Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you. Anias, let me start with this grand title of yours. |
| 1:21.9 | UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Killing, based as you are in New York City. It all sounds rather grand, |
| 1:30.3 | but isn't the truth that you have pitifully few resources? Well, I do have very few resources, |
| 1:37.4 | but that doesn't stop me from implementing my mandate and doing so, keeping in mind the victims, keeping in mind what the |
| 1:48.5 | international community expect from me, which is not to investigate every single arbitrary killing |
| 1:56.1 | on earth, but which is to bring to the attention of decision makers and policy makers killings, which I believe |
| 2:05.8 | reach a level of seriousness and impunity which demands their urgent attention and their |
| 2:13.5 | urgent action. |
| 2:14.4 | It cannot be an exercise in futility whenever I bring to the attention of the international |
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