Prosecutor

Documentary, Current Affairs

Antidote Films

R4

Luis Moreno-Ocampo is the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, the U.N.-sponsored organization based in the Netherlands. His nominal job is to gain inditements against some of the world’s leaders who indulge in what would be criminal murder or genocide. They will then be put on trial in front of the court. He has had his successes, notably with some of the leaders of the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and the intertribal violence by armed militias in African countries.

He also has failures. An inditement has been prepared against President Al-Bashir of the Sudan for his troops’ rape, murder and genocide on the people of Darfur. How do you arrest the President of a country? Al-Bashir retaliated by expelling much-needed aid groups from Darfur. It has been suggested that the prosecutor should also ask for an inditement against ex-President George W Bush for war crimes in Iraq, but the U.S.A. has not even signed up to ratify the ICC convention. Neither has China or Russia. Why would they sign up to an independent system that may lead to the arrest and charging of their own prominent citizens? A U.S. academic tries to excuse the non-participation of the U.S. by stressing that many of the crimes are made under political pressure. A U.S. newsman criticises the cost of the ICC and its notable lack of convictions so far. Neither argument is convincing.

As well as Al-Bashir, the documentary deals with the attempts to prosecute three African militia leaders such as Thomas Lubanga for crimes like conscripting young boys (some only ten years old) to fight in their armies in intertribal violence. Prosecution is difficult because if people appear as prosecution witnesses their family back home may be under threat. If you charge the militia leaders you must also charge the people who led retaliation raids. These are the people you need to arrest the leaders.

Moreno-Ocampo must be a diplomat as much as a prosecutor, as we see when he travels to Lubanga’s home town. While there he must convince the people that genocide and conscripting of the youth will no longer be tolerated. He must confront Lubanga’s mother and he becomes involved in the release of some young soldiers who were conscripted as kids.

With these handicaps we must wonder sometimes if the ICC can ever be a practical court or just a dream. The ICC is in a difficult position. It must rely on signatory countries to perform the arrests as it has no police force of its own. Moreno-Ocampo believes the ICC must be made to work or we will see more Adolf Hitlers and Idi Amins appear in world history. Against him are the powerful countries concerned about the ICC, seeing it as a tool for instability and a threat to peace, whatever that peace may have cost in human terms.

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