25 Facts About Ben Emmerson

Michael Benedict Emmerson CBE KC was born on 30 August 1963 and is a British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law.

Ben Emmerson has represented several current and former heads of State and other political figures, including Mohammed Nasheed ; Ramush Haradinaj ; Arseny Yatsenuk ; and Carles Puigdemont.

Ben Emmerson 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.

Ben Emmerson represented Abdelbasset al-Megrahi 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.

Ben Emmerson attended Douai School and Bristol University, and was called to the bar in 1986.

Until 1999 Ben Emmerson was a member of Doughty Street Chambers, but in February 2000 he left to join the new Matrix Chambers which specialises in human rights.

In June 2011, Ben Emmerson was elected by the UN Human Rights Council as UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights.

Ben Emmerson conducted country visits and reports, and provided technical and other advice to states.

Ben Emmerson produced reports on the counter-terrorism policies of Saudi Arabia, Chile, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Burkina Faso.

Ben Emmerson produced reports on the use of armed drones for counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine, accountability for the torture of terrorist suspects, human rights violations committed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, electronic surveillance, terrorism and migration, the impact of national security measures on civil society, and the UN's counter-terrorism sanctions regime.

Ben Emmerson is currently the British judge on the UN Mechanism of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Ben Emmerson has previously acted as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and Special Adviser to the international judges of the UN backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia.

In 1998, Ben Emmerson successfully represented the claimants in the groundbreaking case of Osman v United Kingdom, a seminal decision of the European Court of Human Rights that first established the principle that a State owes a positive obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights from the criminal acts of a private individual.

In 2003, Ben Emmerson represented Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, accused of being a member of Al-Qaeda, along with a number of inmates of Belmarsh Prison, at a joint hearing of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, challenging their indefinite detention, without charge or trial, on national security grounds.

Between 2005 and 2012, Ben Emmerson successfully defended Ramush Haradinaj, the former Prime Minister of Kosovo, on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

On 29 September 2016, Ben Emmerson was suspended and then resigned from the position.

In 2015 Ben Emmerson represented Marina Litvinenko, wife of Russian ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, at the public inquiry into his murder in London in 2006, using a radioactive isotope,.

Ben Emmerson argued a successful judicial review challenge to the British Government's refusal to hold a public inquiry to examine the responsibility of the Russian State for Litvinenko's murder.

Ben Emmerson was appointed as international envoy for the Maldives opposition in an unsuccessful attempt to seek dialogue through the UN.

In 2018, Ben Emmerson took the case of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to the UN Human Rights Committee, arguing that the government of Spain had violated his right to participate in political life through a legal crackdown, following an independence referendum in Catalonia in October 2017.

Ben Emmerson took up the case of several prominent Catalan politicians and civil society leaders at the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, arising out of their imprisonment in Spain on charges of sedition and rebellion for their part in the 2017 referendum.

At a hearing on 23 May 2018, Ben Emmerson argued that Russian troops were guilty of multiple violations during a "rampage" across Georgian territory in which Russia's aim was to "occupy as much territory as it could get away with".

Ben Emmerson has advised Rohingya victims of human rights violations in Myanmar, and Yazidi victims of human rights violations committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Ben Emmerson was the founder editor of the European Human Rights Law Review and is co-author, with Professor Andrew Ashworth KC, of Human Rights and Criminal Justice, the leading text on the application of the Convention in criminal cases.

Ben Emmerson was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to international human rights and humanitarian law.