The Pinochet Precedent: Who Could be Arrested Next?
Interviews by Marguerite Feitlowitz
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Augusto Pinochet
30 August, 2000
AFP PHOTO/Matias RECART

Human rights experts roundly agree that Augusto Pinochet's 1998 arrest in London has made for a "new moment," a "turning point," "a whole new calculus for transnational justice." Yet the climate remains volatile, marked by unprecedented legal advances as well as dramatic setbacks.

One landmark case embraces both extremes. In February 2000, Chad's former tyrant, Hissein Habre, was arrested in Senegal where, since his ouster, he has been living in exile. A direct consequence of the Pinochet precedent, this was the first time that an African leader was charged with human rights abuses by the court of another African nation. Moreover, the case was brought by victims — survivors of torture, death squads, and terror — who traveled to Dakar in order to testify in court. Hailed by African human rights groups as "the most important [court] case in Senegal's history," the arrest was later overturned by another court, and the judges involved in the earlier decision were fired.

Ricardo Cavallier holding license after release/AP

In August 2000, two Argentine "Dirty Warriors" were arrested while traveling abroad. Ricardo Miguel Cavallo was detained in Mexico on August 24 after Baltasar Garzon, the same Spanish judge who initiated the prosecution of Pinochet, issued an extradition request on charges of torture, murder, and participation in genocide. The former naval officer was known as "Serpico" (for his resemblance to Al Pacino) when he worked at the Navy Mechanics School--often called the "Argentine Auschwitz" or the "Harvard of Death" — where he was famous both for executing and teaching the art of torture. France too has called for Cavallo's extradition, in connection with the torture and deaths in the Navy Mechanics School of fifteen French nationals, including two nuns, Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet. Mexico is expected to comply with these requests for extradition, a process that should take about eighteen months.

A demonstration to support the arrest of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, The signs in photo show pictures of the missing with the caption "Where Are They?" AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

The Italian arrest of Jorge Olivera, a retired Argentine army major, soon became a bizarre legal theatrical. Detained in Rome on August 6 on a French extradition request for the torture and forced disappearance of a French citizen in Argentina in 1976, Olivera was released on September 18 on the basis of a highly suspicious document, soon found to be have been faked by Olivera and his associates. In order to circumvent the fact that cases of forced disappearance have no statute of limitation in international human rights law, Olivera (who is also a lawyer) presented a supposed death certificate for Marie Anne Erize, the French woman he is accused of kidnapping and torturing, and whose body has never been found. By the time the document was proven to be false, Olivera had been flown back to Argentina, where he has legal immunity for atrocities committed during the dictatorship. In Italy, the two judges who released him are under investigation. In the Buenos Aires suburb where he lives, Olivera was officially declared Persona Non Grata; human rights and citizens groups have spray-painted Asesino! Torturador! on the front of his house. Human rights groups are studying ways to bring this miscarriage of justice to an international tribunal.

Witnesses and lawyers in the case of former Chadian President Hissene Habre, stand 31 January 2000 in front of the courthouse in Dakar.

How best to confront such dynamism has become a heated legal, moral, and political issue. The experts consulted for this article disagree, sometimes starkly, on optics, emphases, and preferred courses of action.

Only when asked to compile a working list of former heads of state vulnerable to international arrest in the wake of the Pinochet precedent, did our experts widely concur. For most of the respondents, the magnitude and scale of atrocities were decisive factors in their selections:

IDI AMIN IN 1979 LIAISION

Idi Amin [de facto president of Uganda, 1971-1979], for the scale of his general brutality, purging of the Lango and Acholi tribes, and expulsion of the country's entire Asian population. It is believed that over 300,000 perished in his bloody reign of terror. He is living under official protection in Saudi Arabia. When Human Rights inquired of a Saudi ambassador about the possibility of extraditing him for prosecution, he was told that such an action would violate "Bedouin hospitality."

MILTON OBOTE

Milton Obote, president of Uganda (1980-85), for continued brutality and repression on a scale that some believe to exceed that of Idi Amin. He lives in Zambia.

ALFREDO STROESSER OF PARAGUY /AFP

Alfredo Stroessner, military dictator of Paraguay, (1954-1989), for forced disappearances, torture, political killings. Stroessner lives in Brazil. Because of his participation in the [largely CIA-financed] Condor Plan, along with Pinochet and the regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia, a great deal of information is potentially available. And there is important human rights work now being done in Paraguay by survivors, relatives of the missing, and other activists.

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, president of Haiti (1971-1986), for kidnapping, torture, and the Tonton Macoute death squads. He is living in seclusion in a villa in France, enjoying a lifestyle paid for through decades of systematic corruption.

MENGISTU HAILE MRIAM OF ETHOPIA 79, /Liasion

Mengistu Haile Miriam, dictator of Ethiopia (1971-1991), for brutality and political killings, especially in Eritrea, and the war and famine in Somalia. He lives under protection in Zimbabwe, in spite of Ethiopia's requests that he be extradited to stand trial.

RAOUL CEDRAS IN 1980 /AP

Raoul Cedrás and Philippe Biamby, for their role in the bloody 1991 coup against Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and for torture and mass political murder during their dictatorship. When Aristide was restored to the presidency, Cedrás and Biamby were granted protection by Panama, where they still live. Panama has refused Human Rights Watch's request for extradition or prosecution, on the grounds that it would set a bad precedent to reverse an offer of asylum.


The Experts

Steven R. Ratner
Steven R. Ratner is a Professor of International Law, University of Texas at Austin Law School.

Michael Ratner
Michael Ratner is the Former Legal Director, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights litigator.

Bruce Broomhall
Bruce Broomhall is the International Justice Coordinator, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, New York.

Reed Brody
Reed Brody is the Director of Global Advocacy, Human Rights Watch, New York.

William Bourdon
William Bourdon is the Secretary-General of the International Federation of Human Rights, Paris

Tom Blanton
Tom Blanton is the Executive Director of the National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

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