Why Do Some Dictators Escape Justice?
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press WriterTue Mar 28, 10:11 AM ET
The spotlight of international justice has shone on Saddam Hussein and
Slobodan Milosevic to hold them accountable for alleged war crimes. But many
are asking: What about Suharto in Indonesia, Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and
Charles Taylor of Liberia?
Indonesia's ailing dictator for 32 years is widely believed responsible for
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, yet he lives freely in a wealthy
residential district of Jakarta.
"The problem for any post-Suharto government is that it is difficult to bring
him to trial ... because he is still backed and supported by the military,
which itself participated in the killings of tens of thousands of people," said
Munarman, head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. Like Suharto, he goes by
one name.
Critics say the case of Suharto and others like him highlight an
inconsistency that lends credibility to charges that the trials in The Hague,
Netherlands, and Iraq are "victors' justice."
In Baghdad, Saddam's tumultuous trial is continuing in fits and starts, while
the effort to bring Milosevic to justice halted this month when he died in
custody at the International War Crimes Tribunal.
But Suharto, 85, is among former leaders in the world who have managed to
evade or delay an accounting for their alleged misdeeds.
They include Mengistu Haile Mariam, who directed the "Red Terror" of the
1970s in Ethiopia but who now lives in exile in Zimbabwe, and Chile's former
dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose security forces killed more than 3,000
political opponents from 1973 to 1990, according to official reports.
There have been repeated attempts to try Pinochet, most of which failed after
his attorneys argued he was too ill to stand trial. He is now free on bail
after being charged in a tax-evasion case.
African leaders have been reluctant to see the continent's former presidents
or dictators brought to justice, apparently fearful they would be the next
accused of human rights abuses or other crimes.
Liberia's new government had been urging Nigeria to extradite Taylor, a
former president accused of causing tens of thousands of deaths during his
nation's civil war and of supporting rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Nigeria agreed last week to hand Taylor over to the U.N. tribunal sitting in
Sierra Leone. But the government Tuesday reported Taylor missing from his
southern haven.
Taylor, who escaped from a Boston jail in 1985 to launch Liberia's war, has
been able to tap the West African nation's treasury even from exile, according
to U.N. investigators.
The U.N. Security Council had expressed concern Taylor was using
"misappropriated funds" to undermine his homeland's stability in the run-up to
recent elections.
In Cambodia, meanwhile, no Khmer Rouge figure has stood trial for the death
of an estimated 1.7 million people in 1975-79. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died
in the jungle in 1998, and about a dozen top Khmer Rouge aides were to face a
U.N.-assisted tribunal.
The lack of formal charges against such leaders weakens the deterrence of war
crimes tribunals, said Harold Crouch, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian
National University.
"Obviously the deterrent value would be much greater if they indicted all
these people," Crouch said.
The number of Iraqis who perished during Saddam's rule is usually put at
about 300,000, with no precise statistics available. Milosevic's wars in former
Yugoslavia are said to have claimed at least 200,000 lives, although some place
the figure lower.
Suharto was an unknown two-star general in 1965 when he put down a
still-unexplained military mutiny that he attributed to leftist officers.
Suharto seized power and launched a purge in which an estimated half-million
people mostly communists, socialists, trade unionists and other leftists
were executed. The leaders of Indonesia's fledgling democracy set out to try
Suharto for corruption, gave up, and have never sought to bring him to justice.
Several dozen officers have been tried on charges of killing hundreds of
civilians in East Timor and elsewhere during Suharto's time, but all were
freed. "If you can't convict a captain, how can you convict his president?"
Crouch said
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