Gakiha Weru
11 July 2009
Nairobi — Until last year, the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo was largely unknown in Kenya. He entered the national discourse when Justice Philip Waki wound up his inquiry into last year's post-election violence.
Unlike other commissions, which only end up with a litany of recommendations, Justice Waki, while giving the government an opportunity to establish a local tribunal to try the suspects in Kenya, revealed the existence of the now famous secret envelope containing names of the key suspects.
In a move that jolted many politicians, the envelope was to be placed in the custody of former UN boss Kofi Annan - the architect of the peace deal that ended the post-election stalemate - who was to hand it over to the ICC prosecutor if the government failed to act within a given timeframe.
Instantly, Moreno Ocampo became a household name in Kenya. The possibility that this hitherto unknown man could hold the fate of big names contained in the Waki envelope was tantalising.
When Parliament scuttled the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill 2009 that would have established a local tribunal, it became increasingly clear that Mr Moreno would be going after the "bad boys".
And now it has come to pass. When Mr Annan unexpectedly handed the envelope to the ICC on Thursday, he may have effectively put the careers of senior politicians in jeopardy.
Mr Moreno has the reputation of a fearless prosecutor who throws everything into the game once he is satisfied that the suspect has been involved in crimes against humanity.
Mass killings
In his native Argentina, he shot to fame when he prosecuted members of the 1976-83 military junta between 1984 and 1985. The trial brought to the dock nine senior commanders and three former heads of state who had presided over mass killings in Argentina.
The trials were triggered by a truth commission formed in 1984 which, in eight months, investigated 700 state-sanctioned murders, kidnappings and torture. By the time the trial - described as the biggest since Nuremburg - came to an end, five of the suspects had been prosecuted.
The distinction of the trial was the meticulous gathering of evidence by the prosecution which called more than 800 witnesses and presented thousands of documents in court.
The killings, torture and disappearances took place in Argentina in the 1970s in what is referred to as the "Dirty War". Over this period, a host of military leaders took this South American nation through a murderous purge targeting anybody who expressed disquiet over dictatorship.
Mr Moreno's thinking was greatly shaped by what he witnessed in Argentina as a young man in high school and later as a student at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied law.
When he was elected prosecutor for the ICC in April 2003, he gave a memorable speech in which he detailed his abhorrence for crimes against humanity and his determination to pursue perpetrators of genocide "to the end of the world".
"I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future," he declared.
In additional to serving as assistant prosecutor in the ground-breaking military junta trials, Mr Moreno led the effort to extradite former general Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason from the United States.
He also led the prosecution and investigations into two military rebellions in Argentina in addition to helping put away two army commanders accused of various crimes during the ws in the Falkland Islands.
As prosecutor, Mr Moreno was the bane of corrupt prominent individuals, both inside and outside government.
"The junta trials completely changed my life because at that point I was more involved on the academic side of the law, and I learned everything was different in reality. The criminals were the authorities. The police were committing the crimes," he told the UN News Centre earlier this year. "In fact, most citizens, including my own mother, were supporting the criminals. They thought that the junta had been protecting them from the guerrillas. "
The crimes
He led a group of young lawyers who conducted the investigation because, as he puts it, they could not rely on the police to run the investigation since they had been involved in the crimes.
"Before the trial began we had the truth commission - one of the first in the world, before Chile and before South Africa. The commission identified 3,000 victims. We selected some of them.
"We looked for witnesses and documents proving abduction and then we proved torture of some of them and we proved the killing of some of them.
"The first case was against some of the top commanders of the junta, including the former president, so we started right at the top," he said. He said the most interesting lesson he learnt was that the trial educated the entire population.
"In fact, my mother called me two weeks after the trial started and said 'you were right, I was wrong. I still love General [Jorge Rafael] Videla but he has to be in jail'."
In 1992, Mr Moreno resigned as Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires and established a private law firm, Moreno Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specialises in corruption control programmes for large firms and organisations, criminal and human rights law.
Until his election as prosecutor of the ICC, Mr Moreno worked as a lawyer and as private inspector general for large companies.
Freedom of expression
He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others, as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists' protection and freedom of expression.
Mr Moreno also worked with various local, regional and international NGOs. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean.
He served on the global advisory board and the board of Transparency International, a worldwide organisation whose aim is to reduce corruption in business transactions.
The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr Moreno also served as a member of the advisory board of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition and New Tactics on Human Rights.
Before taking up the ICC job, Mr Moreno Ocampo had been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.
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