MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Global court picks Argentine

Argentine lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo has been tentatively chosen to be the first chief prosecutor of the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, legal sources and diplomats said yesterday.

The main partner in the Argentine law firm Moreno Ocampo & Wortman Jofre and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Moreno was tentatively selected for the post at an informal meeting last week in New York of the 89 nations that act as a steering committee for the court, the sources said.

Their choice is expected to become final at a formal meeting of the 89 nations set for April 21-23 in New York, the sources said.

A descendant of the Nazi war crime tribunals at the end of World War II, the court was created to prosecute individuals accused of atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, and other gross human rights violations.

Eighty-nine countries have ratified the international treaty creating the tribunal, but lack of support from the United States -- a power behind the Nuremberg trials -- has raised concerns about the court's effectiveness.

The court was formally inaugurated March 11 in The Hague where Netherlands Queen Beatrix swore in 18 judges elected in February.

But a functioning staff was not expected to be in place for several more months.

Moreno's law firm specializes in corruption cases, criminal and human rights law.

Moreno has been hired by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to help governments fight corruption. He was federal district attorney of Buenos Aires for criminal cases from 1988 to 1992.

During that time he was in charge of trials of military commanders involved in the Falklands War and the leaders of a 1988 military rebellion.

To date, 139 nations have signed -- and the 89 have ratified -- the international treaty creating the tribunal. The United States has been steering clear of the new court and did not participate in the sessions in which Moreno was selected as its first prosecutor, diplomats said.

President Bush instead mounted an international campaign to protect US officials and soldiers abroad from the tribunal's reach after withdrawing former President Clinton's signature from the treaty establishing the court.

CV: Luis Moreno Ocampo, a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires Law School, is currently in private practice in Buenos Aires, where he specializes in corruption control programs for large organizations. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Penal Law at his alma mater. Mr. Moreno Ocampo played a key role in the trials related to Argentina's democratic transition. He was the assistant prosecutor in the trials against the military junta (1985), and in the trials against the chief of the Buenos Aires Police (1986). When he served as District Attorney for the Federal Circuit of the City of Buenos Aires from 1987 to 1992, he was in charge of the trials against the military responsible for the Falklands [Malvinas] war (1988), those who headed the military rebellions in 1988, and prosecuted many large public corruption cases. He has worked with both the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations, aiding governments to establish systems to control corruption. He was the co-founder of Poder Ciudadano, a non-governmental organization which promotes citizen responsibility and participation. Mr. Moreno Ocampo is a member of the Advisory Committee of Transparency International, a world-wide organization that reduces corruption in international business transactions; in addition he serves as its President for Latin America and the Caribbean. His publications include In Self Defense, How to Avoid Corruption (1993) and When Power Lost the Trial: How to Explain the Dictatorship to Our Children (1996). He has developed methods to teach law and conflict resolution through a daily television show called Forum.