OUR LATEST ISSUE
Gay news: 'This is a man whose first instinct is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence'
Outside the law?
Richard Dawkins plans to have Pope arrested in UK
Atheist campaigner and author Professor Richard Dawkins is planning to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested during his state visit to the UK in September 'for crimes against humanity'.
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author and journalist, have commissioned human rights lawyers Geoffrey Robinson and Mark Stephens to prepare a case for charging the pontiff over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
Using the same legal principle used to arrest the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he visited Britain in 1998, the group may ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings, launch their own civil action or refer the case to the International Criminal Court.
The authors believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is described as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.
Further controversy over the Pope's role in the concealment of abuse committed by Catholic clergy came at the weekend, with the emergence of a letter bearing his signature which argued that the "good of the universal church" should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys.
The letter was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.
Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and a prime mover in last year's campaign for an official apology for gay code-breaking genius Alan Turing, told the Times: "This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence."
Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said: "This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."
