Col Kumar Lama charged under rarely used clause of Criminal Justice Act allowing alleged foreign war criminals to be tried

A Nepalese army officer has been cleared of torturing suspected Maoist detainees following years of investigation by Scotland Yard and two war crimes trials at the Old Bailey.

Lieut Col Kumar Lama, 49, was charged under a rarely used clause of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act that allows the prosecution in the UK of alleged foreign war criminals.

Lama was arrested in 2013 after settling in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, with his family. He had been serving as a UN peacekeeper in South Sudan shortly before being detained.

He was accused of mistreating prisoner Janak Raut during his country’s civil war, which raged between 1996 and 2006. The Old Bailey trial heard that he presided over beatings of his alleged victim while in charge of the Gorusinghe barracks in Kapilvastu. Lama has always denied the charges.

It was claimed that one of Lama’s more unusual torture methods was to allow a soldier’s pet parrot to peck at the victims until they bled.

Lama first stood trial in February 2015 but the jury was discharged following the failure to provide sufficiently qualified translators to hear the evidence of about a dozen Nepalese witnesses who had been flown to the UK.

Last month, a second jury was discharged after failing to agree on a verdict on the remaining torture charge. On Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced it would offer no further evidence against Lama.

The prosecutor, Duncan Penny QC, said: “The crown has carefully and thoroughly considered the evidence on the remaining count and there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”

The judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, told the jury: “It is relatively rare for so many witnesses to require interpreters and indeed for so many problems to arise in one case.” He assured Lama that he would face no further action in British courts.

Section 134 (sub-section 1) of the Criminal Justice Act permits prosecution of foreign war criminals in the UK under so-called universal jurisdiction. The UK is one of 159 signatories to the UN convention against torture and perpetrators must be tried in the country in which they are arrested.

The two trials are estimated to have cost about £1m. His solicitor, Jonathan Grimes, a criminal law partner at the law firm Kingsley Napley, said: “I am extremely pleased for Col Lama that this case is finally at an end and that he can put these allegations behind him.

“The jury’s verdict in August on one of the charges, and today’s decision by the CPS on the other, confirm what Col Lama has always maintained: that he never ordered, or was complicit in, torture.

“The past three-and-a-half-years has been an extremely frustrating and stressful period for Col Lama and his family. There have been unacceptable delays in bringing this case to a conclusion, none of which have been any fault of his.

“He has borne these delays with great patience and good spirit and has always trusted that justice would prevail. I am pleased that Col Lama, an officer who has served with distinction with both the Nepalese army and the UN, will now be able to return to Nepal and resume his military career.

“This case has run into a number of difficulties, in particular, the complexities arising from the fact that most evidence was in Nepal and in Nepalese and that the witnesses were located in Nepal. The reliance by British police and the CPS on evidence gathered by a human rights organisation, Advocacy Forum, has proven to be a mistake.”

Janak Raut, one of the alleged victims, said he respected the jury’s decision but hoped the government of Nepal would consider legal action.

Daniel Machover, a solicitor at the law firm Hickman & Rose, which represented Raut, and an expert in international criminal jurisdiction, said: “We have worked very hard on a number of these cases and it is a source of great satisfaction to know that the UK takes seriously its international obligation to investigate and where appropriate to prosecute alleged crimes of this nature.”

Mandira Sharma, founder of Advocacy Forum, said: “Regardless of the decision not to re-prosecute Mr Lama, the case has already established that the door of universal jurisdiction for the victims of torture and other gross violations is open in the UK and beyond.

“I just hope the government of Nepal understands the gravity of the issue at hand and starts a process to end impunity for torture and gross violations of human rights in Nepal.”







