Top UK Human Rights Lawyer Suicided?
Britain’s top human rights lawyer who represented Julian Assange and worked alongside George Clooney’s wife Amal dies in apparent suicide
EXCLUSIVE BY NEIL SYSON
The Sun
ONE of Britain’s top human rights lawyers who represented Julian Assange and
war criminals has died in an apparent suicide.
Married dad of two John Jones QC, 48, who worked alongside Hollywood actor
George Clooney’s wife Amal, passed away on Monday.
He acted for Wikileaks founder Assange, 44, holed-up for four years in the
Ecuador Embassy in London, when the Swedish government initially tried to
extradite him for questioning on rape charges.
GETTY IMAGES
Street in central London, were currently trying to save the lives of Colonel
Gaddafi’s son Saif and Libyan spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi.
They had been ordered before a firing squad in Tripoli – but the lawyers were
trying to divert their case to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague,
Holland, which does not have the death penalty.
A spokesman for British Transport Police said it was called to West Hampstead
rail station in north London at 7.07am on Monday after a man was struck by a
train.
A spokesman added: “He was pronounced dead at the scene. The man’s death
is not being treated as suspicious. A file will be prepared for the coroner.”
REUTERS
wife Misa Zgonec-Rozej, 40, a director of an international law consultancy,
and his two children.
He specialised in extradition, war crimes and counter-terrorism, taking cases
from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Lebanon and Cambodia.
One of his clients was Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, 65, sentenced to 50
years in a British jail for aiding rebels in Sierra Leone’s civil war in
return for “blood diamonds”.
BIO PIC
In 2014 Mr Jones campaigned for him to be moved to an African prison so he
could be near his family.
The Hague case of Mustafa Badreddine, accused of killing Lebanon’s prime
minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, was temporarily halted on Tuesday to pay
tribute to the lawyer who withdrew from representing the defendant in
September.
Doughty Street said in a statement: “John was a brilliant and creative
lawyer admired and appreciated for his amazing sense of humour,
professionalism and deep commitment to justice. His death is a huge loss.”