Reed Brody's Blog

Calling time on tyranny

Fujimori is the latest in a series of former leaders accused of human rights abuses who are finding out they can't escape justice indefinitely.

Chile's extradition of former president Alberto Fujimori back to Peru to stand trial on allegations of death squad killings and corruption shows that the world is becoming a smaller place for people who commit atrocities.

Until recently, if you killed one person, you went to jail, but if you killed thousands, you got a comfortable exile with your bank account in a foreign country. The Nuremberg trials established the legal principle that there should be no immunity for perpetrators of the gravest outrages, no matter who they were or where their crimes were committed. Yet until Britain's arrest of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile in October 1998, on a Spanish warrant, few states had the courage to put these noble principles into practice.

We do believe that former heads of state deserve a fair trial

Bringing their tormentors to book is an important way for victims to recover their dignity, says Reed Brody

Human Rights Watch spent 15 years documenting the crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime and repeatedly called for him to be brought to justice. Yet we expressed serious concerns about the court established to try him and, after closely observing his trial, found it unfair because of fundamental procedural flaws in the trial itself, including the tribunal's lack of independence.

The dismal assault on Baltasar Garzón

The Spanish judge made many enemies by trying to apply at home the same principles he so successfully promoted abroad

Thirty-five years after the death of General Francisco Franco, Spain is finally prosecuting someone in connection with the crimes of his dictatorship, and of the Spanish civil war which came before it. Unfortunately, the defendant in the case is Baltasar Garzón, the judge who sought to investigate those crimes.

Garzón, of course, is one of the most high-profile judges in the world and what makes the case particularly ironic is that he is being prosecuted for trying to apply at home the same principles he so successfully promoted internationally.

Identify the Congo killers and bring them to justice

The Rwandan government's attempt to discredit the report into atrocities in DR Congo makes one wonder what it has got to hide

Today, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is publishing a vitally important report cataloguing the atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. Those who go through its 500-plus pages cannot fail to be touched by reading of the horrors the Congolese people have suffered and continue to suffer.

Identify the Congo killers and bring them to justice | Reed Brody

The Rwandan government's attempt to discredit the report into atrocities in DR Congo makes one wonder what it has got to hide

Today, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is publishing a vitally important report cataloguing the atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. Those who go through its 500-plus pages cannot fail to be touched by reading of the horrors the Congolese people have suffered and continue to suffer.

While many of the massacres have been documented previously, this is the first report to comprehensively analyse and compile these horrendous attacks, perpetrated by a variety of armed actors over the course of a decade. The report is a powerful reminder of the gravity of the crimes committed in Congo and of the shocking absence of justice. I know because I was there.

In 1997, I was deputy chief of an investigative team sent by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to investigate crimes committed in Congo from 1993 to 1997. The worst period was from late 1996 to 1997, when forces supporting Laurent-Desiré Kabila, father of the current Congolese president, attacked Rwandan Hutu refugees as the elder Kabila swept to power with the support of Rwanda. We received detailed reports of mass slaughter, but our attempts to reach massacre sites were repeatedly thwarted by travel bans, "spontaneous" demonstrations and the arrest of one of our investigators. Although we were stuck for months in Kinshasa, the capital, we were nevertheless able to conclude that some of the attacks revealed "the intent to eliminate those Rwandan Hutus who remained" in Congo.

The UN report published today supports our preliminary findings and documents horrific crimes by many other actors in Congo. Fortunately, this time the UN team had full access to the massacre sites and to witnesses. The key question now, as it was when our team delivered its report in 1998, is whether the international community has the political will to take the next step: identifying the killers and bringing them to justice.

In 1998, our team called on the UN to seek justice for the crimes we documented, and Annan told the security council that "those guilty of violations must be brought to book." The council effectively buried our report, however, signaling to all of those competing to control the eastern part of this resource-rich country that there were no holds barred. As the new report documents, a multiplicity of government armies, rag-tag rebel groups and brutal ethnic militias took that signal as a green light to continue to kill, rape and plunder.

Although the new report does not attribute individual responsibility, it does make clear that many of the soldiers who committed the 1996-7 atrocities were under the effective command of Rwandan army officers and that their overall commander was Colonel James Kabarebe, a Rwandan who had become the interim chief of staff of the Congolese armed forces. He was promoted to chief of staff of the Rwandan army several years later, and today is Rwanda's defence minister.

This conclusion is no surprise. Although the United States denied our team crucial intelligence regarding the structure and movement of Rwandan troops, witnesses consistently told us that officers speaking the Rwandan language were present during the killing of unarmed refugees. Even at the time, Rwanda's strongman – now its president, Paul Kagame – boasted that his government planned and led the military campaign, telling the Washington Post that his objectives were to "dismantle" the Hutu refugee camps in Zaire (as the Congo was then called), "destroy the structure" of the Hutu militia units and "deal with" the Hutu extremists.

What were his exact orders? We are not sure, but as the new report notes, the campaign's final massacres, in Mbandaka and Wendji, over 2,000 kilometres west of Rwanda, "were the final stage in the hunt for Hutu refugees that had begun in eastern Zaire, in North and South Kivu, in October 1996". It adds that the deaths of "several tens of thousands", many of whom were killed after the refugee camps had been dismantled, "cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage". It found that "the majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces".

The Rwandan government has attempted to discredit the report and to pressure Ban Ki-moon to stop its publication, threatening to pull out of its UN peacekeeping commitments in Darfur and elsewhere. By seeking to quash publication of the report, the Rwandan government is raising further questions about what it may be trying to hide. Kagame's forces played a crucial role in ending the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, but this does not absolve them of scrutiny for crimes they may have committed in the years that followed, both in Rwanda and Congo.

Indeed, the Rwandan government's reaction can only hinder efforts to find a lasting solution to the continuing conflict in Congo. As Annan noted in 1998, one of the root causes of the region's conflicts is "a vicious cycle of violations of human rights and revenge, fuelled by impunity. This cycle has to be brought to an end if lasting peace and stability are to be restored to the region." Twelve years later, it is time to heed these words by identifying and bringing to justice the individuals responsible for these atrocities.

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The dismal assault on Baltasar Garzón | Reed Brody

The Spanish judge made many enemies by trying to apply at home the same principles he so successfully promoted abroad

Thirty-five years after the death of General Francisco Franco, Spain is finally prosecuting someone in connection with the crimes of his dictatorship, and of the Spanish civil war which came before it. Unfortunately, the defendant in the case is Baltasar Garzón, the judge who sought to investigate those crimes.

Garzón, of course, is one of the most high-profile judges in the world and what makes the case particularly ironic is that he is being prosecuted for trying to apply at home the same principles he so successfully promoted internationally.

Garzón's daring 1998 indictment of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed in Chile in the 1970s triggered Pinochet's arrest in London and ushered in the heyday of international justice. Many people contested the right of a judge in Spain, which had never come to grips with its own past, to open up wounds in foreign countries. But the Pinochet case inspired victims of abuse throughout Latin America to challenge transitions from dictatorship which allowed the perpetrators of atrocities to go unpunished. These temporary accommodations with the anciens regimes did not extinguish the thirst of victims and relatives to find out the truth and to bring their tormentors to justice. International and national courts ruled that amnesties could not stand in the way of a state's duty to investigate the worst international crimes. Justice is now part of just about every transition to democracy anywhere in the world.

Then in 2008, Garzón set his sights inwards. In the last several years, a growing movement has challenged the "pact of forgetting" which was part of Spain's "model" transition to democracy, and the children and grandchildren of victims filed complaints regarding the enforced disappearances of more than 100,000 people between 1936 and 1952. Garzón took up the complaints, saying that under international law Spain's 1977 amnesty law for "political acts" could not apply to crimes against humanity, before an appeals panel ruled 10 to five that Garzón did not properly have jurisdiction. Far-right groups, including one linked to Franco's dictatorship, then accused Garzón of an abuse of power and an investigating judge has just decided to proceed against Garzón for knowingly taking on a case he knew not to be within his jurisdiction.

In his long career, Garzón has made many enemies. Conservatives are gunning for him now because he helped unearth alleged massive corruption in the financing of the opposition Popular party, but many in the Socialist party haven't forgiven him for probing government support for an anti-ETA death squad in the 1980s. The decision by the investigating judge to proceed means Garzón will soon be suspended from his duties. If he is convicted it would effectively end his judicial career.

Prosecuting a judge for issuing a controversial decision, even one overruled on appeal (in a split decision), is a dangerous attack on judicial independence. Many undemocratic rulers would love to use criminal sanctions to silence meddlesome judges. The assault on Garzón (there are two other cases against him in the pipeline) comes on the heels of the Spanish government's decision to curtail its law permitting the prosecution of foreign atrocities which had been used to indict Pinochet, convict an Argentine official for "dirty war" killings, investigate crimes in El Salvador and Guatemala and issue warrants for top Rwandan leaders. But after cases involving powerful countries such as China, the US and Israel – for alleged crimes in Tibet, Guantánamo and Gaza – created headaches for the Spanish government, both major parties agreed that the law would be limited.

Thanks to Garzón, Spain became a symbol of justice for atrocity victims around the world. Now justice itself may be the victim in Spain.

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Response: We do believe that former heads of state deserve a fair trial

Bringing their tormentors to book is an important way for victims to recover their dignity, says Reed Brody

John Laughland suggests that human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, are more concerned about the conviction of former heads of state than about them getting fair trials. Nothing could be further from the truth (Fujimori's trial could be truly historic - if he is acquitted, October 9).

Human Rights Watch spent 15 years documenting the crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime and repeatedly called for him to be brought to justice. Yet we expressed serious concerns about the court established to try him and, after closely observing his trial, found it unfair because of fundamental procedural flaws in the trial itself, including the tribunal's lack of independence.

While Laughland says that we "had already proclaimed [Fujimori] to be guilty", we in fact pledged to "closely [watch] the proceedings in Peru to ensure a thorough and independent investigation and trial, in accordance with international standards of justice and due process". Similarly, while we have implored African leaders to bring Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam to justice (he is now in Zimbabwe), we have opposed Ethiopia's extradition request for fear that he would not get a fair trial and would be exposed to the death penalty.

Yes, we believe that abusive rulers should face justice. I have worked with the victims of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Chad's Hissène Habré and Haiti's Raúl Cedrás, and I know that bringing their tormentors to book is an important way for victims to recover their dignity. In Haiti, for example, the total impunity with which a small elite literally got away with murder and plunder for generations had left the poor majority assuming that they had no rights.

Laughland has a point when he argues that "there has not been a single acquittal" in trials of former leaders. The problem, however, is with how the procedure is carried out. Often, as in Iraq, the conditions may not exist locally for dispassionate justice, and an international solution should be found. Victors' justice and sham trials do not advance the rule of law.

In a democratic state, trials of the ancient regime should juxtapose the meticulous rules of due process with the conduct of the accused. It was richly ironic that Pinochet, whose war tribunals conducted sham trials and ordered the summary execution of political opponents, took advantage of the full measure of British rule of law for well over a year. Yet it was precisely in honour of the rule of law that he was prosecuted.

According to Laughland, Fujimori is "the 24th head of state to face criminal trial for acts of state since Charles I was executed in 1649". That's not a lot, given the crimes of the past 360 years. In our own times, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Milton Obote, Ferdinand Marcos, Anastasio Somoza, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and Mobutu Sese Seko, to name just a few, were never called to account.

That is why, as Laughland notes, we hailed the conviction of Jean Kambanda of Rwanda as "historic", called Slobodan Milosevic's trial "ground-breaking", and said that the trial of Charles Taylor of Liberia was "a break with the past". It used to be that rulers could brutalise their people, pillage their treasury and then just retire to the Riviera. The tide is turning, fortunately.

· If you wish to respond to an article in which you have featured, email response@guardian.co.uk or write to Response, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. We cannot guarantee to publish all responses, and we reserve the right to edit pieces for both length and content

· Reed Brody is counsel and spokesman for Human Rights Watch in Brussels. reed.brody@hrw.orgReed Brody
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Calling time on tyranny

Fujimori is the latest in a series of former leaders accused of human rights abuses who are finding out they can't escape justice indefinitely.

Chile's extradition of former president Alberto Fujimori back to Peru to stand trial on allegations of death squad killings and corruption shows that the world is becoming a smaller place for people who commit atrocities.

Until recently, if you killed one person, you went to jail, but if you killed thousands, you got a comfortable exile with your bank account in a foreign country. The Nuremberg trials established the legal principle that there should be no immunity for perpetrators of the gravest outrages, no matter who they were or where their crimes were committed. Yet until Britain's arrest of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile in October 1998, on a Spanish warrant, few states had the courage to put these noble principles into practice.

The arrest of Pinochet, who died last December in Chile, inspired others to bring their tormentors to justice, particularly in Latin America, where victims challenged the transitional arrangements of the 1980s and 1990s that allowed perpetrators of atrocities to go unpunished and, often, to remain in power. Argentina's supreme court struck down immunity laws for former officials, and dozens now face investigation and trial for crimes during the 1976-83 dictatorship. Earlier this month, a Uruguayan court approved the trial of Juan Maria Bordaberry, the dictator of Uruguay from 1973-76, on allegations of the murder of opposition leaders.

Pinochet's London arrest also strengthened a new international movement to end impunity for the worst abuses. After the creation of UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the UN established the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.

Even in Africa, where people have long been victims of cycles of atrocity and impunity, international justice is on the march. Senegal has now pledged to prosecute the exiled former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, after refusing to try him in 2001 and refusing to extradite him to Belgium in 2005. Earlier this year, a trial began for Charles Taylor of Liberia before the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone. The ICC is now investigating alleged crimes in Darfur, Uganda, Congo and the Central African Republic.

A number of safe havens remain for those accused of abuses. Idi Amin of Uganda died peacefully in Saudi Arabia. (A Saudi diplomat told Human Rights Watch that "Bedouin hospitality'' meant that once someone was welcomed as a guest in your tent, you did not turn him out.) Mengistu Haile Mariam, alleged to have run a "red terror" campaign in Ethiopia targeting tens of thousands of political opponents, now enjoys the protection of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Indeed, for five years, Japan protected Fujimori from extradition on the grounds that he was a Japanese dual citizen. Then Fujimori made the mistake of traveling to Chile.

One of the safest place for those accused of war crimes to hide may now be the United States, which steadfastly refuses to consider prosecution of those such as Donald Rumsfeld, alleged to have approved criminal interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, or CIA managers for their roles in the "waterboarding" of detainees or the "rendition" of suspects to countries where they were tortured. Just this week, Germany, faced with the US's refusal, dropped a request to the US to extradite 13 suspected CIA agents accused of abducting a German citizen and sending him to be tortured in a secret jail in Afghanistan. Washington has also refused to cooperate with Italian investigators who want to question 26 CIA agents in connection with the Milan kidnapping of a Muslim cleric who was allegedly sent to Egypt and tortured.

The new rule may be that if you are accused of human rights crimes, you can hide but you can't run.

Reed Brody
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