ICC chief prosecutor says EU has 'crucial' role to play in enforcing rule of law

The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court says the EU has a "very important" role to play in bringing those guilty of genocide to justice.

In an exclusive interview with this website, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that Europe had itself "learned the painful" lessons of genocide, not least with the bitter conflict in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

"That is why I believe the EU now has a crucial role to play in what I could call consolidating international consensus on the application of the rule of law," he declared.

Moreno-Ocampo is, effectively, head of the ICC, a permanent court, based in the Hague, charged with prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

He was in parliament on Tuesday to present a film about his work at the ICC as part of a week-long film festival at various venues in Brussels.

In a wide-ranging interview, Moreno-Ocampo, who became the ICC's first chief prosecutor when he took up the post in 2003, touched on the arrest warrants sought by the UN security council against the Libyan leader Mohammed Gaddafi, his son and an accomplice.

He said, "The case is now before the judges. They can accept the request, reject it or ask for more evidence."

He said that, in the meantime, the ICC would continue its investigations into Gaddafi's alleged crimes against humanity.

This includes, he said, allegations that that the Gaddafi regime has used rape as a tool of war.

He said the court had information about women who were stopped at checkpoints and, because they were carrying the flags of the rebels, were taken by police and gang raped.

He also said there were reports of the use of male sexual enhancement drugs, which he called a "tool of massive rape".

"There is some information with Viagra. Viagra is a tool of massive rape," he said.

The Gaddafi case is the latest to be taken up by Moreno-Ocampo, who investigated alleged crimes by the military junta in Argentina in the 1980s.

Since he took up office, the ICC, he said, had indicted 23 individuals with five being imprisoned. Six others remain fugitives, he said.

During his time as chief prosecutor he said he had had to deal with a number of "barbaric" crimes, including allegations that boys in Africa as young as nine had been forced to kill their own parents.

In other cases, he said, nine-year-old boys, again in Africa, killed girls as young as 12 unless they consented to being raped.

"Every day brings another surprise," he said. "But I guess you learn to live with it over time."

He said the "worst" part of his job had not been hearing about such cases but, rather, the "indifference" shown by the international community towards cases of genocide in some parts of the world.

"I am thinking, in particular, of Darfur when the international community turned a blind eye to what was going on there for far too long," he said.

"As a prosecutor, there is nothing worse than seeing the world failing to react to something like Darfur."

He also hit back at criticism that the ICC was guilty of "bias", targeting only weaker developing countries.

He said, "Our job is to protect the weakest in society and that is what I believe we are doing."

Critics say the ICC "lacks teeth", particularly as the most influential countries in the world, including the US, Russia and China, have not signed up to the court and themselves can probably never be properly investigated.

Moreno-Ocampo took objection to such claims, saying, "Ask the Congolese leader Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo if the ICC is toothless and I think he will disagree."

He was arrested near Brussels on 24 May 2008 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Although he was originally charged with three counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes, the ICC reduced the charges to two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes.

He said that in the eight years he has been chief prosecutor, the ICC had been "transformed".

Describing it as the "best job in the world," Moreno-Ocampo, who leaves his post next year, said, "I will pass to my successor a sound institution."

He recalled, "When I was working at Harvard university before I joined the ICC a colleague told me not to come, saying I would spend 'nine wasted years' at the Hague. He could not have been more wrong."

He said the fact that the UN security council had quickly involved the ICC in the investigation into alleged war crimes in Libya "shows how far we have come in the past few years".

"A few years ago, it took weeks and weeks for the ICC to be involved in the Darfur investigation."

He said, "Despite what some may say, we are now part of the international political landscape."