[ppi] [ppiindia] Why do some dictators escape justice?

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http://www.beaufortgazette.com/24hour/special_reports/iraq/story/3243140p-11998222c.html


Why do some dictators escape justice? 
Published Tue, Mar 28, 2006
           
            AP Photo/  
            Then Indonesian President Suharto shoots targets with a rifle at 
the family's Tapos ranch in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, in this Jan. 12, 1994 
file photo. Tucked away in a posh residential district of Jakarta, Suharto _ 
the dictator who led Indonesia for more than three decades _ lives freely in 
the comfort of his sprawling house even though he is widely believed 
responsible for the deaths of twice as many the former Iraqi and Serbian 
leaders combined.  
                 
           

     
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer



JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - 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, according to the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, 
a non-governmental organization. 

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.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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