Tuesday, March 25
7pm GMT

Book talk with FRS member Jon Silverman about his book ‘Safe Haven‘

The controversial 1991 War Crimes Act gave new powers to courts to try non-British citizens resident in the UK for war crimes committed during WWII. But in spite of the extensive investigative and legal work that followed, and the expense of some £11 million, it led to just one conviction: that in 1999 of Anthony (Andrzej) Sawoniuk a Belarusian Nazi collaborator from the town of Damachava in the Brest Region.

Jon Silverman is Emeritus Professor of Media Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. He’s a former BBC Home Affairs Correspondent in which role he won the Sony Radio Journalist of the Year award for his coverage of the UK’s investigations into Nazi collaborators. He is the author of four books, including the first British examination of the phenomenon of crack cocaine and the Yardies – ‘Crack of Doom’ (Headline, 1993). Other works are ‘Innocence Betrayed’ (Polity, 2002) about paedophilia, media and society; and ‘Crime, Policy and the Media’ (Routledge, 2012). His latest (co-authored) work is ’Safe Haven’ (OUP, 2023), examining how Britain provided impunity for hundreds of Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe. He reported from both the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals and has written extensively for journals on international war crimes justice, including the relationship between the International Criminal Court and Africa.

An opportunity to learn more about the FRS Belarus Project and the work being done in Belarus in collaboration with The Together Plan.