First ICC prosecutor elected

First ICC prosecutor elected
AFP via News Interactive
April 22, 2003
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6320380%255E401,00.html

ARGENTINE lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo, who helped put his country's former military dictators on trial, was elected today as the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

He was appointed unopposed in a secret ballot by 78 of countries which ratified the court's founding statute in time to take part in the election. Moreno Ocampo's non-renewable, nine-year term starts on June 16.

Richard Dicker, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, welcomed the election of Moreno, describing the prosecutor as the public face of "the most important human rights institution created in the past 50 years".

The ICC is the first permanent tribunal set up to try cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Its first judges - seven women and 11 men - were elected on March 11 in The Hague, where the court has its headquarters.

Moreno was assistant prosecutor in the 1985 trials of members of the military junta which ruled Argentina from March 1976 to December 1983.

He was later in charge of the trials of those responsible for the 1982 war with Britain over the Falklands or Malvinas islands which led to the junta's downfall and of the leaders of the 1988 military rebellions in 1988.

A visiting law professor at Harvard, he is currently in private practice in Buenos Aires, where he specialises in corruption control programs for large organisations.

Agence France-Presse

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6320380%255E401,00.html