Getting a criminal head of state in the dock was once unthinkable. But as journalist and human rights advocate Steve Crawshaw uncovers in PROSECUTING THE POWERFUL - a blend of on-the-ground reportage and vivid history - it is now a real possibility. In recent years rogue dictators from Serbia's Slobodan Miloševic to Sudan's Omar al-Bashir have all ended up behind bars. Could Putin be next?

Crawshaw delves into the heroic history of the origins of the Geneva Conventions and how in the 20th century Raphael Lemkin (a native of Lviv in Ukraine) coined the term "genocide". Along the way we see how a brave whistleblower in Syria smuggled out pictures of Assad's torture prisons as well as the legal efforts to pin down Chile's General Pinochet. He also tackles the accusations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, interviewing the chief of the ICC Karim Khan, and asks whether western double standards will always undermine aspirations to universal justice.