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Last March, the United Nations Security Council asked the International Criminal Court to investigate international crimes in Darfur. A day after ICC Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo reported to the Security Council on the progress of the investigation into crimes in Darfur, he sat down with Jerry Fowler to talk about the investigation in Darfur and other cases such as Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is Luis Moreno-Ocampo. He is Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court which is based in the Hague. Last March the United Nations Security Council asked the International Criminal Court to investigate international crimes in Darfur. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also is investigating crimes in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo at the requests of the governments of those countries. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, welcome to the program.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be with you on this program.
JERRY FOWLER: You came to the United States specifically to report to the Security Council about the progress of your investigation into the situation in Darfur. What did you tell them?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: The Darfur case was referred to the Court by the Security Council, so for me, it is very important to keep up date the Security Council, not about the case or the evidence because that is my prerogative, but they have to understand what we are doing because basically the Security Council charged a duty to Sudan to work with us. So, that is what we are doing here. What happens and how we are working together with the Sudan is important because this concept of international criminal court is a concept that in fact is tied with the Nuremberg. That is why think it is very relevant to connect the Holocaust Museum with this court because the first international court was Nuremberg. The issue of this court is not just about one case, after Nuremberg was Yugoslavia and Rwanda; there were specific crimes and cases. Our court is for the future; it is a permanent court to investigate future crimes. That is why it is very important to interact with the Security Council and the world. In fact, this is something we learn about from the Holocaust. We learn about the need to do justice, and the need to create these new institutions dealing with super-national problems. These are two lessons learned after the Holocaust. Now it is time to combine the two ideas—the Security Council who is a body of fifty nations who are in charge of the security in the world and with this new court which is in charge of criminal justice for the worst crimes.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention Nuremberg and one aspect of the Nuremberg trials was that the government whose officials were being tried—the Nazi government—had been defeated, so cooperation was not really an issue. In this case, there are accusations that have been leveled against Sudanese government officials, but yet the Security Council has called upon that very government to cooperate with you. Are they cooperating with you, and if so, how?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: That is very interesting. We have to investigate some persons who could be members of the Government of Sudan, supported by the government of Sudan. So it is a challenge for the government and for us. I can investigate the crimes without the support of Sudan. I can do my investigation outside of Sudan with no Sudan support. In fact, we decided we cannot go to Darfur to interview the witnesses because there is no security there. We identified more than 100 witnesses around the world in 70 countries and we are taking testimony there. But the problem is to maximize the good impact of this case, it would be better to have a good interaction with the government. A review will happen, because it is not just about punishment, we have to change, and understand what happened and make decisions. That is a challenge for us, how to work together during this case. Right now, we are working together. Today, I can say, they officially agreed, we are planning to do something future. Though, it is a huge challenge.
JERRY FOWLER: But at the same time, recently the Sudanese minister of Justice has been quoted in the BBC and in Reuters as basically saying, “The ICC has no jurisdiction over Sudanese citizens and that it will not be allowed to investigate inside Sudan.”
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: We have an official letter from the Foreign Minister of Sudan that arrived just a few days ago agreeing with the message we request. So we will see what happens.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention the fact that security is a problem in Darfur that prevents you from doing investigation on the ground in Darfur. Another way of saying that is that the crimes that you are investigating are still being committed which is another distinction with Nuremberg. Obviously at the end of World War II, the Holocaust was brought to an end. It seems a strange thing to have an investigation ongoing started by the Security Council, yet the Security Council has not acted to stop the crimes.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: If fact, our three cases are ongoing crimes. We are learning how justice could help to stop crimes, so this is something we have to enforce with a security mandate. It is a new era. This is a new era in which this international institution has to understand how to work together. It is true. It is unusual.
JERRY FOWLER: Do you see evidence that the fact of your investigation has affected what has happened on the ground in Darfur?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, no I cannot say that in Darfur. They could have some preventive impact. While in Columbia they are talking about the ICC, so you can see some cases in which there is evidence of how we could have a preventative impact in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: The one force on the ground in Darfur that is trying to provide security is the African Union. What kind of cooperation have you gotten from the African Union in carrying out your inquiries in your investigation?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: We never went to Darfur and they are basically in Darfur, so we did not request cooperation for Darfur and they did not provide. We are talking to them about how to have an agreement and how to work together in the future, but today, we did not receive yet.
JERRY FOWLER: Obviously, it is well known that the United States government has not been supportive of the International Criminal Court, although it did allow this referral to Darfur to happen. What kind of relations had you had with them on the Darfur investigation? Have you requested assistance? Have you gotten assistance?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, no. We did not request in any nature. In fact, in the Security Council meeting they informed us that they are not ready to cooperate. In any case, we are not requesting any cooperation that would be a problem for the United States. We respect the state decision, we respect those that are willing to cooperate and those that have a different point of view. It is a national decision.
JERRY FOWLER: You mentioned other cases that you have under investigation and I referred to them at the beginning of the program. One of them, of course, is Uganda. In October, you unsealed the first arrest warrants that have been issued by the International Criminal Court. Who did you charge in that case?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: In Northern Uganda there in a group called Lord’s Resistance Army who is a real group who started representing the Acholi community and the President Museveni. But then they were involved in something different, they were involved in the conflict in Uganda and Sudan in the past. Now basically they are abducting kids and girls in northern Uganda, and also in south Sudan. In the period 2002-2004, they killed 2200 boys and girls and abducted 3300 persons. So it was a very dangerous group so we investigated them for nine months and we presented very well-founded requests and now there are three countries—Congo, Uganda, and Sudan—who are now committed to arresting them. So the Court is providing a service. Three countries that had challenging relations in the past are ready to cooperate now to arrest them. I hope we can arrest them and stop violence in northern Uganda.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention that one of the countries that committed to helping is Sudan which is of course the country that is involved in the other investigation. What have they committed to do?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: They have signed a memo of understanding committing themselves to execute the requirements. Congo and Uganda are members of the International Criminal Court; Sudan is not. So Sudan had no legal obligation, so it is a step ahead.
JERRY FOWLER: What do you think the prospects are of actually arresting the charged?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: We are working on this. We will see. It is a big challenge. In fact, the system is not my work; I have to do the legal part. The execution of that part are basically in the hands of the diverse states first, and the international community. So well will see what happens.
JERRY FOWLER: Is this a weakness of the International Criminal Court? You can bring a case, but unless governments act to arrest the people that you have charged, actually having justice done is left dangling as it were.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: It depends. It depends on the support that the international community provides. If they are ready to execute the requirements it will show the strengths of the courts. If not, maybe it is a weakness. We will see. All this is new. This institution has no benchmark. Each day we are facing new problems and testing new solutions.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you this. You issued arrest warrants for five top members of the LRA. How did you decide who to charge in that case?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: We did investigations. There were 150 attacks during the period that we investigated. We analyzed the attacks, we drew 6, and we analyzed the group attacks and we found 7 persons as a hypothesis to investigate. After we collected the evidence, we saw that 2 were dismissive, and we remain with five. Our policy is to focus on those with the highest criminal responsibility.
JERRY FOWLER: So you are consciously going for the big fish.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Yes. It is the only thing we can do. We cannot do all the cases, we do this selective justice. But we believe this will help to stop the crimes. We will see.
JERRY FOWLER: What danger is there that having this selective justice becomes just a token effort? In other words, you have many people who could be responsible for the crimes, and you are prosecuting really just a handful.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Ok, look. I was a prosecutor in Argentina, in Buenos Aires in 1985. Argentina was the first trial after Nuremberg, and I was upset with the problem. I had thousands to prosecute, how to select so few in number? What are the criteria? I remember meeting here in New York with Benjamin Franks, a prosecutor in one of the Nuremberg cases. I asked him, “Mr. Franks, what did you do in Nuremberg, in the trials. Did you have evidence against many people?” “Oh yes, the Nazis were very well organized and they had evidence collected in the archives so we could prosecute thousands on thousands.” “So what did you do?” “Oh, we prosecuted twenty-two.” “Twenty-two?” And I was interested in this because what is the criteria? Why twenty-two? How did they define the responsibility? So I asked him, “Why twenty-two?” And he said, “Because we had twenty-two chairs in the courtroom.” The interesting answer is that when you are dealing with massive crimes there is no legal criteria; you have to choose some. We are trying to refine our method, to have some rationale. The idea is as now we learn how to cooperate with other actors, if we arrest top people, it will help to stop the crimes, and that is what we are trying to do.
JERRY FOWLER: The other situation that you are actively investigating, and you referred to as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a catastrophe on massive scale, millions of people have died in the last few years. Where do you stand on that? That was actually the first investigation that you opened.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Most of the crimes were committed before 2002. Our Court opened it just after July 1, 2002. In our prediction there are allegations of about 8000 killings committed by a diversity of different groups. We are selecting the worse groups, and starting with them. We are completing the first investigation of one of these groups. It will be the first case, and then another case against other group; we may have to be there for many years.
JERRY FOWLER: You have these three investigations ongoing. Two other countries have asked you to investigate them—the Central African Republic and the Ivory coast, at least two that are publicly known—how much capacity do you have? How many situations can you take on at once? Even with this very selected, targeted approach that you have?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Right now we are trying to have a reasonable number because we are just starting. I staffed my office about two and half years ago. We had three persons, and then we grow from 3 to 40, and now from 40 to 180. It is an incredible growth. It is very complicated. We believe it is important to establish our office. We did not request more teams to do the investigations. As soon as we finish the Ugandan case, we will start a new investigation with the same team. The plan is to keep three investigation teams and rotate as we finish cases. Three cases at a time for now. We cannot do more, even with more money. Maybe later, we will take more.
JERRY FOWLER: You have mentioned several times that this is a new undertaking, a new organization, you are feeling your way. You are the first Chief Prosecutor of this new court. What do you hope will be your legacy?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: I have a privilege and the honor. It is the best position in the world for a lawyer, or a person really. I have to the best I can to build this institution, because this is the institution for the next century. In the long run, I want to build this institution with clear goals, clear standards, good protocols, and the best people. I have 180 persons from 55 countries and we are trying to achieve justice in these cases. And another goal I think we have, I think it is possible in ten years to stop massive crimes—not war crimes, not wars—but these kinds of atrocities in which people and groups are committing massive numbers of killings, massive number of rapes, displacing millions, this is possible to stop. There is consensus in the world to stop this. In the next three or four years, we will do cases that expose this and maybe we can mobilize other resources and other actors, that playing together, we can stop these crimes. So I think that in ten years, it is possible to have it as a goal to stop massive atrocities committed by states. We can do it.
JERRY FOWLER: When you say to stop them, do you mean through the example of prosecution? Or stop them, because prosecution will lead to political will—
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: It is a combination of efforts. For instance, I remember a meeting with generals in charge of legal area, one of them told me, “Look, in my country the commander in chief as soon as you took office called me and told me, ‘General, you have to be in each time when we are planning an operation, you have to review the operation to make sure you have no problem with the treaty.’” So we are playing a preventative role. I think it is an immediate area, in the education area, in many areas; we can promote activities and then end these kinds of massive crimes.
JERRY FOWLER: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, thank you very much for joining us today.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Thank you for this.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the genocide emergency in Darfur, visit our web site at www.committeeonconscience.org.
