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afrol.com, 27 September - The charges brought against Chadian ex-dictator Habré before the the Dakar Regional Court this year and the withdrawal of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's diplomatic immunity has raised people's hopes of seeing other despots answer for their crimes. The pressure exercised by civil society will remain a decisive factor. For a long time the world had grown accustomed to seeing autocrats die of old age, clinging to power until the last minute, as in the case of Kamuzu Banda in Malawi or Kim Il-Sung in North Korea. Later we saw them overthrown by mass mobilisations: Marcos in the Philippines, the Shah of Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua, Menghistu in Ethiopia, Mobutu in Zaire. Today, it is the thirst for justice and truth that prevails. By now the message to would-be despots and apprentice dictators is clear: wherever you go, your past will follow you. With one piece of good news following closely upon another, we recently learnt, in the wake of the withdrawal of General Pinochet's immunity, that a former Argentinian military, Jorge Olivera, suspected of kidnapping and torturing a French girl during the Argentinian dictatorship (1976-1983), had been arrested in Rome. On the basis of an international warrant for arrest issued by a Parisian examining magistrate investigating the disappearance of French nationals during the dictatorship of General Videla, he should be extradited to France. Videla himself, currently living under surveillance in Buenos Aires, has been indicted by Judge Garzón in Spain, the same judge who originally initiated the proceedings against Chilean Pinochet. The Habré trial Senegal had nevertheless pioneered a new ethos in Africa by accepting, at first, to judge an exiled dictator on its own territory, in accordance with the UN Convention against torture, which Senegal ratified in 1986. Menghistu Haïlé Mariam Ould Dha As can be seen, we are still very far from the "universal jurisdiction" some dream about. The economic and diplomatic interests of countries, not to speak of the cases of outright collusion with dictatorships, still override justice much too often. It is this kind of complaisance which, for example, enables the bloodthirsty former dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada, whose repressive actions caused close to 200,000 deaths between 1971 and 1979, to enjoy a happy retirement in Saudi Arabia, while his successor, Milton Obote, resides peacefully in Zambia. A great number of people implicated in the Rwandan genocide are enjoying complete impunity. For how long? It is difficult to say. What is certain, however, is that the Pinochet case has strengthened the wish to see justice done. The torturers are benefiting, at most, from a temporary stay of proceedings. For example, the French Minister of Justice, Elisabeth Guigou, has made it known that she does not rule out the possibility of instituting proceedings against former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, currently living somewhere in France. Meeting in Rome in June 1998, the representatives of 160 countries decided to establish an International Criminal Court to judge the most heinous crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes). The Statute of the International Criminal Court will come into force as soon as it is ratified by 60 countries. To date it has obtained 14 ratifications. If the setting up of an International Criminal Court, provided for by the 1998 Treaty of Rome, will make it possible to prosecute dictators and torturers and overcome the deficiencies of national laws or the lack of political will, it should be remembered that such a court will not have any retroactive competencies and that it will therefore only be able to judge events that take place after its creation. It is therefore the present judicial instruments that must be deployed to put an end to the impunity still enjoyed by numerous torturers. And whether these instruments are indeed deployed will depend to a large extent, and for some considerable time, on the degree of mobilisation of civil society.
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