4.2.12 WC: 191694
I had a more personal reason as well. I deeply admired Rabin and I supported his efforts to make peace. We knew each other, though not well, and he had consulted with me regarding several issues, including the one that may have led to his death.
Eight days before Rabin was killed, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States had asked me to meet with Prime Minister Rabin, when he was scheduled to speak in Boston later that month. I asked the Ambassador what the subject of the meeting would be, and he told me that the Prime Minister was deeply concerned about the increasingly virulent level of rhetoric in Israel and the fact that certain fringe religious and political figures were advocating violence against government officials. He wanted to discuss whether there were ways of constraining the level of vitriol without infringing on the right of free speech.
I agreed to meet with Rabin and wrote the appointment in my calendar. The meeting was not to be. Rabin was murdered a week before his scheduled trip to Boston. I could never erase the scheduled meeting from my appointment book.
I declined the offer to represent Amir, and watched with interest as his lawyers tried to present the “rodef’ defense to an appropriately unsympathetic judge. Amir was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He was married while in prison and allowed conjugal visits, during which he fathered a child.
Other murder clients I rejected included Radovin Karadic, the head of Bosnian Serbs during the terrible ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia. Karadic first called me while he was still a fugitive and while the killings were still ongoing and asked me to represent him. I told him of my policy of not representing fugitives or people involved in ongoing crimes. He asked if he could call me again if the circumstances changed. I did not say no.
Shortly after receiving this call, I had occasion to be at a dinner with then President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. My decision to turn down Karadic had been reported in the press (he or someone close to him disclosed it) and it became the subject of discussion. Mrs. Clinton was adamantly against my representation of this “butcher,” but President Clinton said that if I could persuade him to turn himself into the international tribunal in the Hague as a condition of my representing him, it would be a worthwhile tradeoff. Karadic did not turn himself in, and when he was finally caught many years later, he asked me to meet with him in his prison cell in the Hague. I met with him just days after his capture and we discussed his case, as well as the cases of several of his former colleagues (one of which I was involved in). In the end, I did not represent him. He is still on trial in the Hague.
During the “Arab Spring” of 2011, I received calls from individuals representing both deposed President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and then fugitive leader of Lybia, Muammar Gaddafi, both of whom were being accused of killing innocent civilians.
A Norweigan human rights activist who was close to Mubarak asked me if I would be willing to
go to Cairo as part of the Mubarak legal team. I raised the question of whether it would be wise for Mubarek to be represented by a Zionist Jew. He said that I would be part of a team of three
229
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017312