Michael Mansfield is arguing that the new rules for securing an arrest warrant for visiting politicians when it is thought they may have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity effectively undermines the principle of universal jurisdiction - 'makes a mockery' of it. Others have been saying the same sort of thing since the legislation was first mooted. It isn't true, however. The principle of universal jurisdiction for such crimes allows that a person suspected of committing them may be tried in any country, irrespective of where they were committed or of the nationality of the putative perpetrators or of the victims. Nothing whatsoever follows from this about the legal procedures to be followed in the country in which a prosecution is to take place under the principle, just so long as there are credible mechanisms of some sort. For an arrest warrant to be issued in this country the agreement of the director of public prosecutions (who would consult with the attorney general) is now necessary.
Mansfield and others of like mind fear that inappropriately politicized, rather than evidence-based, assessments will be behind these decisions. We shall see. But the very same people appear not to be troubled at all about the prospects of politicized and non-serious inititiatives to secure an arrest, and directed, these, overwhelmingly at visitors from one particular country - Israel. Yet that was the principal justification for the recent legislation: to prevent the criminal law being used for political ends where the evidence for a prosecution was unlikely to be forthcoming.
Why someone should worry about the inappropriate politicization of this process only in one direction and not in any other is isn't altogether puzzling when the discussion of the issue has centred on Israel and Israel alone. Mansfield for his part frames his whole piece in terms of that country, though he does allow a short parenthetical interjection indicating that there may be others in the Middle East worthy of consideration in this matter. By short I mean that it consists of two words.