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Idi Amin à la porte de la mort : les despotes ne doivent pas reposer en paix

04 août 12:46:00

Emetteur : Human Rights Watch

Les temps ont vraiment changé .Bientot les ministres d'Etat Jocelerme Privert, Mario Dupuy repondront de leurs crimes . Ils vont tres bientot comprendre le temps . Deja bon nombre d'entre eux ne peuvent plus fouler le sol de l'oncle Sam meme pour raison de sante . Le jour J n'est pas loin . C'est faux ok allez donc demander a Jacques Quetant ?

Idi Amin is dying in a hospital in Saudi Arabia. The former dictator of Uganda, accused of massive crimes, has nonetheless lived the last 25 years in comfortable exile. Fortunately, this kind of impunity is becoming a thing of the past.

When I asked a Saudi diplomat a few years ago about the possibility of Amin's extradition or prosecution, he told me that OEOEBedouin hospitality'' meant that once someone was welcomed as a guest in your tent, you did not turn him out.

In fact, Bedouin custom mandates hospitality for three days only. But it is this kind of blind welcome which made for the old adage, OEOEkill one person, you go to prison; kill 20, you go to an insane asylum; kill ten thousand, and you get invited to a peace conference.''

Amin is part of a shrinking club of ex-tyrants living safely in exile. Their number includes Amin's equally brutal successor Milton Obote, now in Zambia. Haiti's Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier is hiding out in France." JBA Jean B Aristide le chef de la terreur et le superviseur # 1 de la circulation , de distrution et de l'expedition de la cocaine en Haiti ne fait que continuer la dictature des Duvalier " Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose OEOERed Terror'' campaign in Ethiopia targeted tens of thousands of political opponents, now enjoys the protection of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, who used torture to maintain a 35-year reign, is retired in Brazil.

Amin's regime was responsible for widespread murder and torture and the wholesale exile of his country's Asian community. When Amin was ousted in 1979, he eventually wound up in Saudi Arabia, where he has lived in ease on a Saudi stipend. If Amin's rule provided an enduring symbol of madness and tyranny, his comfortable exile has proved equally symbolic ? representing the safe havens that ex-dictators were long able to expect.

Times are changing, however. The establishment of the new International Criminal Court and the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia represent a new determination by the international community to seek punishment of the worst international crimes. Despite fierce U.S. opposition, 91 countries have ratified the international court, and last week, the court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, announced that he was looking into crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a possible first case.

National courts have also shown an increasing willingness to hold individuals to account for abuses committed abroad. The arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 on a warrant from a Spanish judge for crimes allegedly committed in Chile sent a message to tyrants that they could not avoid justice by hiding behind walls of impunity. Just last month, Mexico extradited the notorious Argentine naval officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo to Spain for alleged torture and OEOEdisappearances'' during Argentina's 1976 to 1983 OEOEdirty war.'' Justice also seems likely to catch up with Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad. Habré, who lives in exile in Senegal, was indicted by a judge there three years ago on atrocity charges, though the Senegalese courts ultimately ruled that they did not have jurisdiction to try him. Habré's victims are now seeking his extradition to stand trial in Belgium, and Senegal has agreed to hold him pending an extradition request. Last year, a Belgian judge visited Chad to investigate the charges, while the Chadian government has formally waived Habré's immunity.

Exile is becoming harder to find. The shadowy Peruvian spymaster, Vladimiro Montesinos, now on trial at home, was surprised two years ago when he was denied refuge even in Panama, the traditional safe haven for washed-up despots. (Raoul Cédras of Haiti and Jorge Serrano of Guatemala are there now; in the past it hosted the Shah of Iran.) Montesinos's boss, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, is clinging to his rediscovered Japanese citizenship to shield himself from extradition back to Peru.

Charles Taylor, Liberia's embattled president who has been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court, may find temporary shelter in Nigeria, but it probably won't protect him for long. And if Saddam Hussein is ever located, it's a sure bet that he won't enjoy a comfortable retirement.

It is unfortunate that Idi Amin will die in his OEOEtent'' without being brought to justice for his crimes, but the world is a smaller and smaller tent. One day, the Idi Amins of this world will find they have nowhere to hide.