MADAME PROSECUTOR

[Are_grits_groceries]

Cynics argue that because the United Nations was unable to stop the carnage in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, it set up war crimes tribunals instead, as a kind of humanitarian consolation prize.

What the diplomats did not expect was Carla Del Ponte’s determination to bring the perpetrators to justice and to end the culture of impunity. As the attorney general of Switzerland, she had fought against the muro di gomma, the wall of rubber, that deflected her attempts to stop Mafia money-laundering. “Madame Prosecutor” is her account of battling the muro di gomma across the Balkans, Rwanda and Western capitals.

It is a relentless, sometimes (understandably) angry book, and an important insider’s account of the quest for international justice. Each of its 13 chapter titles begins with the word “Confronting”: “Confronting Ko­sovo,” “Confronting Rwanda’s Genocide,” even “Confronting the Tribunal Bureaucracy,” the heading for a chapter in which she accuses some of her own officials of obstruction and incompetence.

Del Ponte’s determination to make the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals functioning instruments of international criminal justice caused consternation. She was a wild card, disrupting diplomacy’s finely calibrated responses. Yet she succeeded, at least in part. Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia, was arrested on charges of genocide and died in his cell at the United Nations detention center in The Hague in 2006. Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, is detained there now and is preparing his defense against ­charges of genocide.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/LeBor-t.html?ref=books

We need her now to disrupt a few things. (I wouldn't want her after me for anything!) :scared:

[gratuitous]

1. If we're lucky

Someone who respects the rule of law like Ms. Del Ponte will be carrying out the prosecutions of U.S. officials for their crimes against humanity. I fear, however, that the more likely prospect is that it will be someone who doesn't follow the rule of law, but acts as simultaneous judge, jury and executioner. This person or persons will probably not be too picky about who they prosecute, either, indiscriminately scooping up the guilty with the comparatively innocent.

But I'm sure none of us will mind paying with our lives for the crimes of the Bush administration.

[ensho]

2. One Woman

can do a lot as herstory shows us.

viva Carla

hugs