International Criminal Law, Corruption, and Law Enforcement

According to news reports, General Augusto Pinochet has been indicted in Chile on kidnapping charges arising out of the disappearance of 19 political opponents in the first months of his rule in Chile, which began in 1973.  In August 2000, the Chilean Supreme Court had removed his immunity from prosecution under Chilean law.

 

According to news reports, a French appeals court has held that the Libyan head of state, Muammar Qadhafi, could be prosecuted in France for his alleged role in the bombing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989. French prosecutors have opposed the prosecution, arguing that Qadhafi is entitled to head-of-state immunity in the French courts, but an investigating magistrate rejected the argument and the appeals court upheld that decision. The prosecutor is likely to appeal to the Court of Cassation, the highest court in France.

 

On February 3, 2000, a court in Senegal indicted Hissène Habré, the head of state in Chad from 1982 to 1990, for presiding over a pattern of torture during the period of his rule in Chad.  Habré fled from Chad to Senegal after being overthrown in 1990.  He has lived in Senegal since then.

The case is similar to, but not the same as, the proceedings in the United Kingdom aimed at the extradition of former Chilean head of state Augusto Pinochet to Spain for prosecution on charges of presiding over systematic torture in Chile while he was in power there.

If the persons responsible for the hijacking of the commercial jets and the subsequent intentional crashes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 can be identified and apprehended, they could face prosecution in virtually any country that obtains custody of them.

 

            On June 28, 2001, the Government of Serbia sent Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, to The Hague for trial on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.  The surrender of Milosevic complied with an international arrest warrant issued by a United Nations judicial body, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, headquartered in The Hague. Milosevic, a Serb nationalist leader, was indicted by the tribunal in May 1999 on allegations of murder and ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo.