Adam LeBor
Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction
Tamerlane: Sword of Islan Conqueror of the World
By Justin Marozzi
HarperCollins 449pp £25 order from our bookshop
TYRANTS WREAKING DEATH and destruction are much in the news lately. Saddam Hussein has been charged with crimes against humanity, and will eventually be tried in Baghdad. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian President, is on trial in The Hague, accused of war crimes and genocide in Bosnia. In both cases, the challenge before the prosecutors is to prove that the defendant exercised ‘command responsibility’, meaning that he either ordered atrocities, or knew they were occurring and did nothing to stop them.
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