Feisty chief prosecutor finally nets the big one
By Philip Blenkinsop
THE HAGUE (Reuters): Two years ago, Carla del Ponte served notice that, as the international tribunal's new chief prosecutor, she would target the architects of the Balkan blood- letting and the ethnic cleansing they encouraged.
After years of prosecuting lesser lights, ever more senior Bosnian Serb and Croat political and military began appearing in the UN tribunal's dock at The Hague.
Now, in the form of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the 54-year-old Swiss lawyer has the Tribunal's most wanted man in her grasp. Yet, she is unlikely to rest on this success.
Criminal proceedings against Milosevic are also just beginning, she said on Friday. But there was more to do.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic are the next prized catches.
"The transfer of Milosevic is a turning point that will lend renewed energy to the task of arresting those fugitives that are still at liberty," del Ponte told a packed news conference on Friday.
"Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were first indicted six years ago. The fact they have not been arrested while we are preparing for the trial of other members of the Bosnian Serb leadership is scandalous," she said.
Victims and their families had to "be able to see that nobody is above the law or beyond the reach of international justice".
Del Ponte, who took over from Canadian Louise Arbour in September 1999, has tirelessly toured Western capitals insisting their leaders turn encouraging words into firm political will.
Lacking its own police force, the tribunal has had to rely on NATO troops, patrolling in Bosnia, to pick up the remaining indictees. Observers have questioned how committed NATO members are to risking their soldiers in arrests which have turned bloody.
Western influence, and the promise of US$1.28 billion, has undoubtedly encouraged Yugoslav compliance. SFOR's supply of suspects had recently run dry, with the one of exception of Bosnian Serb Dragan Obrenovic who was arrested in April.
Certain tribunal officials called for caution after Milosevic fell in a mass uprising in October 1999, but del Ponte, less likely to mince words, quashed talk of a compromise deal, saying the transfer of the former Yugoslav president was the only option.
Born in Lugano on Feb. 9, 1947, del Ponte learned English in London before studying law in Bern and Geneva. She started a law career in her home town in 1975.
She became an investigating magistrate in 1981 and later joined the public prosecutor's office, still in Lugano.
In 1994 she became the country's top prosecutor and attorney general and shifted Switzerland's law enforcement into a higher gear. She was a staunch ally of Milan judges probing corruption by Italian politicians and froze assets of a number of suspects including Bettino Craxi.
In Geneva, Switzerland's secretive hub of private banking, many bankers disliked the way del Ponte was ready to seize assets and break open the vaunted Swiss banking secrecy.
Prior to taking on the job at the Tribunal she was head of the Swiss judiciary, the police and secret services.
Del Ponte chased dirty money dealings by cocaine cartels, indicted former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband for money laundering, set her investigators on the track of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden for his alleged involvement in the 1997 attack of Muslim militants in Luxor which killed 58 foreigners, most of them Swiss.