The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Telling tales from crime’s sharp end
Ahead of a Dundee lecture, Professor Sue Black tells Michael Alexander about forensic science and women’s success in law
As one of Britain’s leading experts in human identification, Professor Sue Black has investigated some of the most horrific international war crimes of our times.
Dundee University’s professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology has sifted through the burnt remains of Kosovan war victims with her bare hands to see if physical evidence corroborated claims they had been murdered by Serbian soldiers.
And she has travelled to Sierra Leone, Thailand and Iraq on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to help identify the bodies of those killed in natural disasters and massacres. Sometimes the only way to identify victims has been by analysing their veins.
So it is with anticipation that she is looking forward to welcoming the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Dundee University on Saturday to discuss the importance of scientific evidence in high-profile trials.
Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian lawyer and the first female to lead the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague, is one of four highly successful and inspirational women leading the next instalment of the university’s Saturday Evening Lecture Series.
War crimes
Her office investigates and prosecutes cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
She will be in conversation with leading Scots lawyer Dorothy Bain QC, whose work and recommendations led to the formation of Scotland’s National Sexual Crimes Unit in 2009, to discuss the use of scientific evidence in court.
Prof Black, along with Professor Niamh Nic Daeid, will introduce the event, entitled International Crime.
And with Saturday also International Women’s Day, the talk will take on extra significance as it is one of the first events of Dundee University’s 2016 Women in Science festival.
“The really interesting thing about this lecture is that we don’t really know how it will go,” Prof Black said.
“I would expect that Mrs Bensouda will probe into areas of how challenging is it for women working in the International Criminal Court circuit and how difficult is it for women in law.
“I would anticipate – but I just don’t know – that she’ll look at the changing landscape of international crime.
“With so much of international crime now occurring digitally and online, how does that affect the criminal courts? How has the criminal court evolved? All of these things are up there.
“And I suspect Dorothy Bain will also probe her background, because she’s a terrific role model for women. They both are.”
Forensic science has helped put the likes of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic on trial for alleged war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
Yet Prof Black says there is still work to be done to further improve confidence in the evidence.
“My principal role is identification of victims, “Prof Black explained. “This is something that has become increasingly important in the modern international judicial system.
“If you are prosecuting somebody for the murder of Joe Bloggs and then Joe Bloggs turns up alive, that prosecution holds no water.”
Identifying the living
However, identification of the living is also a vital part of her work.
This week, for example, she received a commendation from Greater Manchester Police for identifying the perpetrator of child sexual abuse from a video.
“This guy in Manchester has gone down for 15 years for the rape of a twoyear-old girl, “she said.
“He videoed it and drugged the child so she would be compliant. It’s horrendous.
“Up until that point he had said ‘no comment’ during the prosecution but when our report came in identifying him from his anatomy in the video, it was ‘OK then, change of plea’.
“That change of plea is incredibly important because you save a shed-load of money and it means that little girl and her family aren’t having to give evidence in court.”
If you are prosecuting somebody for the murder of Joe Bloogs and then he turns up alive, it holds no water