The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee held a day-long conference in December on the Roots of Violent Radicalisation, as part of its inquiry into the same subject. As editor of Searchlight, I was invited to address a workshop on the seriousness of the threat from the far right, together with three colleagues – Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust, which protects the Jewish community, and two academics who specialise in researching and analysing the far right: Dr Matthew Feldman of Northampton University and Professor Nigel Copsey of Teesside University.

Well over 100 delegates and speakers took part. They included MPs, academics, senior police officers and others in the criminal justice system, local authority representatives, voluntary sector workers and overseas delegates, all involved in some form or another in preventing, analysing or dealing with the consequences of violent radicalisation. In line with the majority of participants, the speakers on our panel all showed a degree of dissatisfaction with the Government's Prevent strategy, notwithstanding its revision in 2011 to address extreme-right terrorism as well as the threat from al-Qaeda and like-minded groups and individuals.

A lawyer who seeks out and associates with nazis and antisemites and downplayed the horrors of the Holocaust to defend a Nazi war criminal has been invited to take part in a public event at the University of London. Jacques Vergés will join the distinguished international lawyer Martti Koskenniemi in a discussion on international justice and the danger of staging show trials.

Adam Carter looks at whether Vergés has merely given his notorious clients the legal representation in court to which everyone has a right or has stepped over the line in their support.

JACQUES VERGÈS, WHO has been invited to speak at an event titled "International Justice: Between Impunity and Show Trials" in February 2012 by London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), is no ordinary lawyer. He earned the nickname, "the Devil's advocate" on account of his close association with some of the worst mass murderers, terrorists and extremists of the 20th century, including Klaus Barbie, the convicted Nazi war criminal, the infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal (the Venezuelan pro-Palestinian lllich Ramirez Sanchez), Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, former Iraqi deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and the veteran Swiss Nazi François Genoud.

Here you will have read that Jacques Vergès, known as the Devil's advocate, has been invited to participate in a panel discussion on international justice at the School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London.

Vergès's name will be familiar to those who have stood out against Nazism and extremist terror. For those to whom it is not well known, there is plenty of information about him on pages 6-9. This is the man who, with the financial and political backing of some of the top postwar nazis and their allies, has defended mass murderers and war criminals from Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", to the cold-blooded terrorist killer Carlos the Jackal and more recently Pol Pot's chief Khmer Rouge henchman who was responsible for the Cambodian killing fields, where around two million men, women and children were put to death.

Why a School of London University should invite and permit his presence is beyond all reason and justice. His role goes well beyond the legal representation needed to ensure his criminal clients get a fair trial.