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Traitor with a cause
Known to millions for his time in the turret on BBC’s The Traitors, Hugo Lodge is a barrister, sanctions expert and long-time Amnesty supporter. As he dons the green cloak once more – this time for the London Marathon in April – he talks about running for Amnesty, the Rwanda genocide and human rights.
Interview by Kitty Melrose
What led you to be a barrister? I wanted to be a lawyer from an early age. I loved the Rumpole novels and the radio and TV series. He was very much a barrister that gave a voice to the voiceless and the under- represented. He would fight petty corruption and have massive victories. I also saw a documentary called Fourteen Days in May about death row in America, and thought, my goodness, lawyers can make a difference, not just in pounds and pence, but they can save someone’s life. That was a real driving force for me aged 15 to then be lucky enough to study law at Cambridge University.
When did you first start supporting Amnesty?
When I was 15 years old and I’m now 51. There was a campaign at school about a hunger strike in a prison. There was still apartheid in South Africa. The idea that there are universal human rights that Amnesty will campaign for on a global scale really struck me. If I’d won The Traitors, I would have given all the money to Amnesty. I think it is the pre-eminent international human rights organisation that shines a spotlight on wrongdoing.
How do human rights feature in your legal work?
I’m not a human rights practitioner per se, but in the fields I operate in, for example sanctions law,
40 AMNESTY SPRING 2026
there are sanctions for gross abuses of human rights – the
so-called Magnitsky sanctions.
I’ve written books on sanctions including those aimed at targeting human rights abuses. One of my seminal experiences was going to East Africa as a lawyer to help with a human rights manual. I saw the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and moving memorials. I visited a church in Nyamata where thousands of people were massacred, and the way they preserved the clothes and bones of the victims was visceral. I’d studied the Holocaust at A level, but in East Africa, for the first time, I was confronted with what was a very modern genocide.
Hugo runs the London Marathon on 26 April. Donate:
justgiving.com/ page/hugo-d- bailey-1
Follow his progress @hugodbailey
© MarathonFoto
© BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/Matt Burlem
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