| Comment Monday, July 28, 2003 REED BRODY / ENDANGERED SPECIES Nowhere to run for former tyrantsFortunately, this kind of impunity is becoming a thing of the past. When I asked a Saudi diplomat a few years ago about the possibility of Amin�s extradition or prosecution, he told me that ��Bedouin hospitality�� meant that once someone was welcomed as a guest in your tent, you did not turn him out. In fact, Bedouin custom mandates hospitality for three days only. But it is this kind of blind welcome which made for the old adage, ��kill one person, you go to prison; kill 20, you go to an insane asylum; kill ten thousand, and you get invited to a peace conference.�� Amin is part of a shrinking club of ex-tyrants living safely in exile. Their number includes Amin's equally brutal successor Milton Obote, now in Zambia. Haiti�s Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier is hiding out in France. Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose ��Red Terror�� campaign in Ethiopia targeted tens of thousands of political opponents, now enjoys the protection of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Paraguay�s Alfredo Stroessner, who used torture to maintain a 35-year reign, is retired in Brazil. Amin�s regime was responsible for widespread murder and torture and the wholesale exile of his country�s Asian community. When he was ousted in 1979, he eventually wound up in Saudi Arabia, where he has lived in ease on a Saudi stipend. If Amin�s rule provided an enduring symbol of madness and tyranny, his comfortable exile has proved equally symbolic �representing the safe havens that ex-dictators were long able to expect. Times are changing, however. The establishment of the new International Criminal Court and the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia represent a new determination by the international community to seek punishment of the worst international crimes. Despite fierce US opposition, 91 countries have ratified the international court, and recently, the court�s prosecutor, Mr Luis Moreno Ocampo, announced that he was looking into crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a possible first case. National courts have also shown an increasing willingness to hold individuals to account for abuses committed abroad. The arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 on a warrant from a Spanish judge for crimes allegedly committed in Chile sent a message to tyrants that they could not avoid justice by hiding behind walls of impunity. Just last month, Mexico extradited the notorious Argentine naval officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, to Spain for alleged torture and ��disappearances�� during Argentina�s 1976 to 1983 ��dirty war.�� Justice also seems likely to catch up with Hissene Habre, the former dictator of Chad. Habre, who lives in exile in Senegal, was indicted by a judge there three years ago on atrocity charges, though the Senegalese courts ultimately ruled that they did not have jurisdiction to try him. Habre�s victims are now seeking his extradition to stand trial in Belgium, and Senegal has agreed to hold him pending an extradition request. Last year, a Belgian judge visited Chad to investigate the charges, while the Chadian government has formally waived Habre�s immunity. Exile is becoming harder to find. The shadowy Peruvian spy master, Vladimiro Montesinos, now on trial at home, was surprised two years ago when he was denied refuge even in Panama, the traditional safe haven for washed-up despots. (Raoul Cedras of Haiti and Jorge Serrano of Guatemala are there now; in the past it hosted the Shah of Iran.) Montesinos�s boss, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, is clinging to his rediscovered Japanese citizenship to shield himself from extradition back to Peru. Charles Taylor, Liberia�s embattled president who has been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court, may find temporary shelter in Nigeria, but it probably won�t protect him for long. And if Saddam Hussein is ever located, it�s a sure bet that he won�t enjoy a comfortable retirement. It is unfortunate that Amin will die in his ��tent�� without being brought to justice, but the world is a smaller and smaller tent. One day, the Idi Amins of this world will find they have nowhere to hide. Mr Brody is special counsel, Human Rights Watch. |
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