UNITED NATIONS, April 22 (Hina) - The countries charged with establishing the first international criminal court unanimously elected a prominent Argentinean lawyer the court's first chief prosecutor at the United Nations' headquarters
in New York.
UNITED NATIONS, April 22 (Hina) - The countries charged with
establishing the first international criminal court unanimously
elected a prominent Argentinean lawyer the court's first chief
prosecutor at the United Nations' headquarters in New York. #L#
The election of Luis Moreno Ocampo as the International Criminal
Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor was expected. The countries which
established the ICC had agreed on Ocampo's appointment at a meeting
at the headquarters of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague
last month.
The ICC was formally inaugurated on March 11, when 18 judges were
confirmed. The ICC will prosecute the gravest violations of
international law, individual responsibility for war crimes,
including genocide, mass murder, enslavement, rape, torture and,
once that term is defined, the crime of aggression.
The Rome Statute, a document which established the ICC, took effect
on July 1, 2002, and the ICC will prosecute only those crimes which
occur after that date. So far, 89 countries have ratified the
statute and 139 have signed it.
Ocampo will take up his office, which is a separate organ of the ICC,
on June 16.
Ocampo specialises in criminal law and human rights and programmes
for the prevention of corruption in corporations. He has prosecuted
cases related to the protection of journalists and victims of the
Holocaust.
At the time of the political turmoil in Argentina in the 1980s,
Ocampo was assistant prosecutor in the trials of military junta. He
also headed a team of prosecutors who analysed more than 10,000
cases of human rights violations, which eventually resulted in 700
processes.
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