THE Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia, Admiral Earl Mountbatten, wrote in his foreword to the Trial of Captain Gozawa Sadaichi, “When Japan capitulated I realised that the trial of war criminals might be a source of difficulties. I was determined the military authorities should have nothing to do with trials of a political nature. I therefore laid down that the Japanese should be tried on criminal charges only; that is to say for brutality etc. It was also important that a chain of responsibility should be established; for this was the only way in which individual brutalities could be laid at the door of those who authorised and encouraged their perpetration.”

Colin Sleeman, an assistant judge advocate-general with Headquarters Allied Land Forces, South-East Asia Command, in 1946, played a prominent part in two important war-crimes trials in Singapore.

Despite the defeat of the Japanese armies in Burma by the Commonwealth 14th Army under General Slim, the humiliation of the colonial authorities at the hands of the Japanese in 1942 had significantly damaged Britain’s prestige. Mountbatten was determined this prestige should not be further diminished by any appearance of the trials being a vindictive act against a beaten nation. Consequently, the defendants were provided with qualified legal counsel. Sleeman acted in two key trials in this capacity.

In the first trial in January 1946, Sleeman acted as senior defence counsel for Captain Gozawa Sadaichi and nine others charged with maltreating Indian army prisoners of war and the illegal execution by beheading of Sepoy Mohamed Shafi, accused of planning to escape. Proceedings lasted 11 days and before announcing the findings and sentences, the President of the Court told the accused, “You have been defended, powerfully defended, by two officers [Sleeman and his assistant] who were lately your bitter enemies. They have defended you with great skill and zeal.”

The officer who had carried out the illegal execution, Lieutenant Kaniyuki Nakamura, was sentenced to death; Sadaichi, the officer in charge of the prison camp, received 12 years imprisonment, and seven others lesser prison sentences. One of the accused was acquitted.

The defendants at the second trial, in March and April 1946, were 21 officers of the Kempeitai (Japanese military police) accused of atrocities against civilian internees in Changi Jail, Singapore. An audacious operation led by Major Ivan Lyon, of the Special Operations Executive based in Australia, known as SOA, had resulted in the sinking by limpet mines of seven Japanese merchant vessels in the Singapore Roads in September 1943. The Japanese suspected that the attack had been based on information provided by prisoners in Changi. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hamida Haruzo, ordered a search of the cells and numerous addresses in Singapore.

Subsequently, 57 European and Eurasian internees and a number of local Chinese were taken to Kempeitai headquarters for interrogation. Many, including Leonard Wilson, the Bishop of Singapore, were brutally tortured. One died in his cell. When one of the torture victims attempted suicide, the guards refused him medical treatment and allowed him to die. Another 13 died after their return to Changi. All those interrogated confessed to sabotage, although they knew nothing about an attack on the shipping. A few had managed to assemble shortwave radio receivers but none had attempted an outside broadcast.

Sleeman acted as leading defence counsel for all the accused. At the end of the trial, Haruzo and six other officers, together with an interpreter, were sentenced to hang. Three were given life sentences and the rest various terms of imprisonment. Sleeman’s meticulously detailed accounts of the trials were published in 1948 and 1950.

Stuart Colin Sleeman was born in Bristol in 1914. The son of a solicitor, he was related to Sir William Henry Sleeman, the Victorian soldier and administrator known for his suppression in India in the 1930s of the “Thugs” who preyed on travellers. He was educated at Clifton, read history at Merton College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1938.

After the outbreak of war he served as an administrative officer in the Ministry of Economic Warfare. He was later commissioned into the 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel on the staff before appointment as Assistant Judge Advocate General.

On his return to England Sleeman focused primarily on divorce work but in 1953 he was junior counsel for the defence, under Derek Curtis-Bennett, in the trial of John Christie, the serial murderer later portrayed by Richard Attenborough in the film 10 Rillington Place (1971).

He was appointed a bencher of Gray’s Inn in 1974 and served as a recorder from 1975 until his appointment as a circuit judge the following year. After sitting at Coventry he appeared frequently at courts in Surrey, where he won respect for his down-to-earth approach, well-reasoned judgments and shrewd sentences.

He married in 1944 Margaret Farmer, who survives him with two sons and daughter.

His Honour Colin Sleeman, a circuit judge, 1976-86, was born on March 10, 1914. He died on June 14, 2006, aged 92.