BBC World Service
Courtenay Griffiths has no doubt over the morality of defending alleged war criminals.
Courtenay Griffiths has acted for the defence in some of the UK's most controversial cases.
He has defended the IRA following bombing attacks in the UK, as well as representing one of the youths cleared of murder charges relating to the death of Damilola Taylor – the 10-year-old boy who was killed on a London housing estate in 2000.
Most recently, his position as lead defence lawyer for former Liberia President Charles Taylor has seen his cross-examination of supermodel Naomi Campbell and other high-profile witnesses make headlines across the world.
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Talking over the phone from The Hague, he discussed his career with the BBC World Service's Matthew Bannister.
He explained that although defending people like Mr Taylor is considered controversial, his conscience remains clear.
"Our system of justice cannot operate unless there is a semblance of equality between prosecution and defence. Otherwise it becomes an inquisition and that would soon lose the confidence of the public.
"It is right and proper that a defendant, however heinous the crime committed, has the right to the best representation."
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One of the first times I went to court in south London, I arrived in court suited and booted, brief in my briefcase – only to be told ‘Oh, the defendants sit at the back of the court sir’.”
End Quote Courtenay Griffiths
Despite the serious allegations of war crimes levelled against Mr Taylor, Mr Griffiths maintains it is irrelevant to his right to a good defence.
"The morality of Charles Taylor is none of my business.
"That's between him and his God, whichever God he chooses to worship. My job is to present his case in court. I'm certainly not going to be making moral judgements about any of my clients. I've defended, for example, terrorists – but to make a moral judgement about such defendants is to forget that, you know, one man's terrorist is another man's war hero.
It is this strong belief in fair representation for the accused that drives Mr Griffiths, and that his own view on whether his client is innocent or guilty has never had any bearing on how he works.
"My job is to present a case, and it's for the jury or for the judge to decide that issue. Consequently it's not a question that I ask. I may have my own suspicions, but at the end of the day I'm not the person returning the verdict, so consequently my views are totally immaterial."
Mr Griffiths' determined attitude to his work is a product of a challenging and diverse upbringing.
In 1955, his father moved from Kingston, Jamaica, to Coventry in pursuit of work as a carpenter.
Several years later, in 1961, the rest of the family followed. It was no small relocation – Mr Griffiths was the second youngest of eight brothers and one sister.
"The first time I saw my father was when we got off the boat train from Dover at Charing Cross, a station in London," he remembers.
Almost immediately he was being subjected to, in his words, "bizarre racism". The sight of 11 black people walking through the centre of post-war Coventry was enough to stop most people in their tracks.
"All the white citizens in Coventry would stop my parents and ask: 'Can we touch them? It's good luck.' That was kind of disconcerting.
"It was a completely novel event for them. Constantly we'd virtually stop traffic in Coventry anytime we ventured out."
But the arguably naive racism of passers-by soon made way for more serious attacks which had a lasting impression on a young Courtenay.
"I personally remember one afternoon being in the Precinct – that ugly concrete structure in the middle of Coventry – and must have been about 14 or 15 at the time.
"Something happened, and I was taken by a police officer, a very large chap I remember, to the police box in the centre of town.
"Me with my public education was trying to argue the toss with him. He was having none of it. He grabbed me round the collar, pushed me up the face: 'Listen blackie, you're in police custody now, don't mess around'.
"Whenever there was an incident in Coventry involving black youths, the first port of call would be our house because there was eight boys living in that house."
Spurred on by these events, he saw law as a way out of the life he and his family were living, a life supported by the sole bread winner in their house, his father.
"He was always talking about the famous barristers in Jamaica, in particular Norman Manley who was a British QC before he later became prime minister of Jamaica.
"He always extolled those virtues to us. I think a major influence was also the church in that some of the best advocacy or oratory I've ever seen in my life was done by uneducated black men who could rouse a congregation of hundreds of people into hysteria, just by their mere presence and delivery."
Media attention erupted after Mr Griffiths cross-examined Naomi Campbell
As one of the few black men in the British judicial system, his early endeavours in the courts were challenging.
"One of the first times I went to court in south London, I arrived in court suited and booted, brief in my briefcase – only to be told: 'Oh, the defendants sit at the back of the court sir'.
"Meaning, because I was black, I had to be awaiting a charge, or had to be up on a charge. I couldn't conceivably be a barrister representing anyone in that court."
He found the best way to deal with such prejudices was to tackle them head on, more often than not with humour.
"Often, I'd open my address to the jury by saying: 'With my white wig and black gown I look like a pint of Guinness, don't I? Good head though…'.
"They would look at me initially, there would be a sense of apprehension, then I would burst into laughter and then they'd feel confident enough to laugh as well."
Mr Griffiths' early cases would be conducted in front of an audience of few. Now, however, the televised courtroom has seen him thrust into the public eye. It's a distraction that he says does not cross his mind.
"When you're cross-examining, you need to focus on the witness. You need to see the witnesses' reactions to your questions, not merely in terms of the answer, but in terms of their facial expressions, body language and so on.
"Then you need to listen to the answer you're given, to see what opportunities arise out of that answer.
"You're also controlling all the notes you've made and you've got the paper on the lectern in front of you – you tend to be focusing on that.
"What's happening in the public gallery with the television cameras and the rest of the media doesn't really enter into my mind."
However, he does admit that the medium of television does suit what he describes as a "performing art".
"And like every other performing art, you have to prepare well and you have to practise that skill.
"What you see in court today which everybody is lauding, my cross-examination of Carol White and Naomi Campbell, people seem to forget that it took me 30 years to develop those skills. On top of that, people don't see me working in my study until two, three in the morning."
You can hear the full interview with Courtenay Griffiths by Outlook on the BBC World Service by clicking here.
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Robbie Williams tells BBC Radio 1’s Chris Moyles that he almost didn’t go to a reunion with his former Take That bandmates because of “nasty” comments he’d made about Gary Barlow.
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In their first interview together in 15 years, Robbie Williams says he said “nasty things” about Gary Barlow that threatened Take That’s reunion.
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Guide to film adaptation of cult comic Scott Pilgrim vs The World
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Coppola won four Oscars for his Godfather films
Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola is to receive a lifetime achievement Oscar later this year.
It will be the sixth Academy Award for the 71-year-old – four of them were for his films about the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family.
Honorary awards will also be given to French director Jean-Luc Godard, actor Eli Wallach and film historian Kevin Brownlow.
The awards will be given out at a ceremony in Los Angeles in November.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science said Coppola's Irving Thalberg Memorial Award was given to "a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production".
Through his American Zoetrope studio, which he established in 1969, Coppola has produced more than 30 films, including The Black Stallion, The Outsiders and Lost in Translation, which earned his daughter Sofia an Academy Award nomination for best director.
Godard, 79, a key figure in the French New Wave movement, started out writing about cinema before impressing audiences and filmmakers with his influential first feature, Breathless.
Long-time character actor Wallach, 94, appeared in The Magnificent Seven, The Misfits and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He is also in Oliver Stone's upcoming Wall Street sequel.
"Each of these honourees has touched movie audiences worldwide and influenced the motion picture industry through their work," said Academy President Tom Sherak.
"It will be an honour to celebrate their extraordinary achievements and contributions at the Governors Awards."
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Jack Lang will aim to make it easier to prosecute pirates
The former French minister Jack Lang is to become the United Nations' special adviser on piracy, it has emerged.
Mr Lang, 70, a former professor of international law, will advise on ways of prosecuting pirates captured off Somalia.
He has previously served as France's culture minister, education minister and special envoy on North Korea.
His appointment was revealed by Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, who said Washington welcomed the news.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had earlier told the Security Council he intended to appoint a piracy adviser, but did not say who it would be.
Mr Ban said the new adviser would attempt to plug some of the weak links in piracy law, by exploring a new mechanism for prosecuting captured pirates, establishing which state might host it and how those convicted could be imprisoned.
Captured pirates are currently being handed over to Kenya and the Seychelles for prosecution. But there are concerns that the Kenyan legal system in particular is overburdened.
In May, Russia complained after it was obliged to release pirates its forces had captured in the Gulf of Aden during an operation to rescue a hijacked Russian oil tanker.
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Gareth Williams' body was discovered in a holdall in the flat in Pimlico
Further tests are to be carried out on the body of an MI6 worker which was found in a holdall in the bath at his central London flat.
The body of Gareth Williams, 30, from Anglesey, was found in the Pimlico flat on Monday afternoon. Police believe he may have been murdered two weeks ago.
A post-mortem examination carried out on Wednesday proved inconclusive.
The Metropolitan Police said more tests, including toxicological analysis of his blood, would be carried out.
The force is treating the death as "suspicious and unexplained".
The body was discovered when officers broke into the flat in Alderney Street after colleagues said Mr Williams had not been seen for at least 10 days.
Officers went to the flat after attempts by the Foreign Office to locate him via his former landlady failed.
'Lovely guy'
The post-mortem examination by a Home Office pathologist failed to determine a cause of death, although it is believed he was not stabbed.
Originally from Holyhead, north Wales, Mr Williams was on secondment to MI6 from his job as a communications officer at the GCHQ "listening post" in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
The Foreign Office contacted his former landlady Jenny Elliott on Monday after his work colleagues reported not seeing him for "some time".
Mrs Elliott said he lived in a flat attached to her Cheltenham property for 10 years and was preparing to return on 3 September.
"He phoned me a few weeks ago to say he was coming back," she said.
She described him as "a lovely guy, very friendly, very well-mannered and polite and no trouble at all".
She added: "He was often away. He went to America to work a lot and often combined it with holiday because he hated flying."
Officers who entered the Pimlico flat, which is about half a mile from the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) on the banks of the Thames, discovered a mobile phone and several mobile phone Sim cards laid out.
On Wednesday, Mr Williams' uncle, William Hughes, told BBC News that his nephew never spoke about his work but he said he was "very, very talented".
His father Ian, who works at Wylfa nuclear power station and lives in Valley, Anglesey, went straight to London after being told of the death, with his wife and daughter Ceri, who lives near Wrexham.
The police are understood to be looking into aspects of Mr Williams' personal life.
It is not known what work he was doing for MI6.
After it emerged he had been working for the intelligence services, a spokesman for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is handling press inquiries for MI6, said: "This is a police matter.
"It is long-standing Her Majesty's Government policy not to confirm or deny any individual working for the intelligence agencies."
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Louis Armstong recorded Weiss's most famous song, What a Wonderful World
US songwriter George David Weiss, who helped write chart-topping tracks such as Can't Help Falling In Love and What a Wonderful World, has died aged 89.
The musician died of natural causes at his home in Oldwick in New Jersey, his wife Claire said.
Weiss also co-wrote songs which were recorded by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Elvis Presley.
He collaborated on several Broadway musicals including Mr Wonderful and Maggie Flynn.
A talent musician, he played piano, violin, saxophone and clarinet.
However, his mother was always against his chosen career in the music industry and tried to persuade him to train as a lawyer.
Weiss was a military bandleader in World War II, but it was at songwriting that he began to excel.
Some of the other notable compositions he wrote or co-wrote included The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which was recorded by the Tokens and Oh! What It Seemed to Be, which was sung by Frank Sinatra.
But his most famous song was What a Wonderful World, which he wrote in 1967 with Bob Thiele.
Louis Armstrong's version of the song was a worldwide hit and was used in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam.
In 1984, Weiss was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and became president of the Songwriters Guild of America until 2000.
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BBC News Magazine
The prime minister has put work on hold to be with his new daughter, but many new dads can't afford the statutory time off. Is modern Britain coping with fatherhood?
It is those precious early moments with a new child that so many fathers treasure. A time to bond with their offspring and offer invaluable assistance to the mother.
After welcoming new daughter Florence into the world, Prime Minister Dave Cameron is taking his statutory paternity leave to be with his wife Samantha.
But it is an experience that not all of his fellow dads feel they can justify sharing. Thanks to decades of shifting attitudes, their reluctance is not based chiefly on chauvinism or a belief that childcare is woman's work. The problem, instead, is money.
Some 45% of new fathers said they did not take paternity leave, according to a 2009 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Of those, 88% said they would have like to have done so and 49% said they could not afford it.
As it stands, new fathers with long enough service are entitled to ‚£124.88 a week or 90% of their average weekly wage if that is lower. Assuming a 40-hour working week, it is a figure that comes in well below the minimum wage.
Why I didn't take paternity leave
Tom O'Brien, 37, loudspeaker designer from Hove, East Sussex
When my daughter Iris was born two-and-a-half years ago, paternity leave was ‚£109 a week.
There was no way I could afford take it – that wouldn't cover the mortgage, not without dipping into our savings. And savings are something you need when you've got a newborn.
I took two weeks annual leave instead and then it was back to work. Of course I've got 13 weeks unpaid annual leave I could take, but who can afford that?
In my case, I was lucky because I don't work crazy hours and my wife could ring me at work if she needed me. I don't think I missed out on anything, but who can tell?
If we had a system like in Scandinavia that would be different, but I have to make the best of what we've got.
My wife is expecting another in February and I'll do the same again.
Fathers can take an additional 13 weeks off, unpaid, before the child turns five and, from April 2011, new mothers will be able to transfer the second half of their year-long maternity leave to the father. But this too will be unpaid, thus, again, of little help to those without the necessary savings.
For many families, the situation reinforces the traditional norm that daddy is the breadwinner and mummy the homemaker.
And yet this comes at a time when public attitudes appear to reject such gender roles. The EHRC study found that only 29% believed childcare was the mother's primary role.
The imbalance raises the question of what exactly paternity leave – and, indeed, modern fatherhood – is actually for.
Lancaster University's Dr Caroline Gatrell, an expert in work-life balance, says much of the pressure stems from competing – and contradictory – social pressures on modern men.
One the one hand, she believes, they are, unlike their own forebears, expected to live up to the idealised template of the "co-parent" or "flexible father" Be the perfect modern dad who takes an equal role in childcare and spends plenty of quality time with his kids.
On the other hand, however, she says the same men are very often in workplaces based on long-hours cultures, where asking for flexible working arrangements is frowned upon.
"There's this huge disparity between what is supposed to be put in place and what actually happens," she says.
"The way we do parenting has changed, but the rules haven't caught up. Men want to be hands-on parents, but among employers and those who make the rules there's an underlying expectation that women are the ones who take responsibility for parenting."
Samantha Cameron can expect a helping hand from her husband over the next fortnight
Dr Gatrell's depiction of men grappling with the ideal of having it all may provoke an ironic laugh from feminists. But she says this situation hardly benefits women either, and undermines many good intentions.
The father's paternity leave ends just as acquaintances' interest in the novelty of the new arrival wears off, meaning the mother is left alone. When the working father comes home for his "quality time" with the children, the mother is left to do the housework.
So what can be done to match wider expectations of co-parenting with reality – if at all?
Rob Williams, chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute, a think tank which lobbies for changes in the law to allow dads more time with their children, believes the UK needs to restructure its system along the lines of Scandinavian countries, where paid time off can be shared among both parents.
"Modern British families have come a long way. According to some studies, fathers spend 800% more time with their children than they did in the early 1970s," he says.
"But among those who make the rules, there's still the assumption that father is a useful helper, but his real role is to be the breadwinner."
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Times have changed and so have our priorities”
End Quote Damion Queva FQ Magazine
However, what might be good for families' work-life balance may not be welcomed quite so fulsomely by their bosses. Employers warn of the extra burden they would face.
Commenting on the April 2011 changes when they were announced in January, Katja Hall of the CBI said British businesses did their best to support flexible working and recognised the need for greater gender equality in childcare responsibilities. But also warned the government needed to be careful not to impose a "bureaucratic tangle".
Damion Queva, owner and publisher of the "dad's mag" FQ Magazine, says he can see both sides of the argument – both as an advocate of greater recognition for fathers and as an employer.
"There are a lot of very good businesses that already allow paternity leave beyond the statutory minimum, they recognise that a happy employee with a good work-life balance will be a loyal employee," he says.
"At the same time, I think it's reasonable for workers to give plenty of notice, clear their desks before they go off, maybe come in a bit earlier and leave a bit later before their leave starts.
"Times have changed and so have our priorities. But that applies to employers as well as their employees."
Could this be the birth of a new era? In between changing nappies, two weeks will give David Cameron plenty of time to reflect.
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