From Nuremberg to The Hague and the Pinochet effect

This panel looks at one success story: the development of international criminal justice, from the Nuremberg trials to the setting-up of ad hoc tribunals such as the tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. However, this development is also rife with contradictions, which will be addresses by various stakeholders in a three-part discussion.

In his work, New York lawyer Peter Weiss deals with the crimes of South American military dictatorships as well as transnational corporate profiteering, nuclear weapons, and the use of torture by the Bush Administration.

His colleagues Juan Garcés and Reed Brody from Madrid and New York were also actively involved in the prosecution of the Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet. The European criminal proceedings against the Argentine and Chilean military leaders in the late 1990s showed for the first time that civil society movements could bring about progress in the legal sphere. Most recently, Reed Brody together with stakeholders from Chad worked to bring about the prosecution of the longtime Chadian dictator Hissène Habré – the so-called “Pinochet of Africa” – before a special court in Senegal.