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| In 1998, General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London after a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, requested his extradition on grounds of complicity in torture. Other European countries followed with their own extradition requests. Five hundred days later - after the House of Lords approved Pinochet’s extradition in accordance with the 1984 International Convention against Torture and under a bilateral extradition agreement - a medical team found General Pinochet unfit to stand trial. He was allowed to return to Chile, where a Chilean judge, Juan Guzman, opened an investigation into the crimes of this former head of state. The case was suspended after a second medical examination suggested that Pinochet was mentally unable to participate in the proceedings. In June 2000, a Senegalese Court indicted the former Chadian president, Hissene Habré, who had fled to Senegal to escape prosecution in Chad for complicity in acts of torture. In 2001, Lebanese victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity filed a criminal complaint in Belgium against the current Israeli head of the state, Ariel Sharon. In June 2001, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia on grounds of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In September 2001, the family of a Chilean general, René Schneider, filed a suit in Washington against former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, accusing him of plotting the general’s 1970 assassination. Another complaint against Kissinger was filed in Santiago, Chile, the following day for his role in “Operation Condor.” In the preceding months, French, Chilean and Argentine judges had also issued requests to question Kissinger about his knowledge of and involvement in “Operation Condor.” Several other criminal complaints for human rights violations have been filed in national courts against high-ranking public officials and companies, such as the current president of Congo-Brazaville Sassou Nguessou and the French petrol company TotalFinaElf. This has been made possible through the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Several of these complaints have been filed in Belgium, under the 1993 and 1999 amendments to the Belgian law that enable the investigation of crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and torture regardless of who, where, when or against whom these crimes were committed. The international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia currently investigate crimes committed during wars in these territories. An International Criminal Court will be established upon the ratification by 60 countries of the Statute of Rome, negotiated in 1998. |
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ICAIs commitment | |
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Efforts against Impunity | |
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The people | |
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Kissinger Watch | |
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Oil Companies Sued | |