Luis Moreno Ocampo

Luis Moreno Ocampo (born 4 June 1952) is an Argentine lawyer who served as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2012.

The firm worked pro bono on public-interest cases such as political bribery, representing the victims in Italyʹs requested extradition of Nazi officer E. Priebke and the daughters of Chilean General Carlos Prats, murdered by Chilean secret police in 1974 in Buenos Aires.

At the age of 32, Luis Moreno Ocampo became deputy prosecutor of the Trial of the Juntas, where those most responsible for the Argentine military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983 were tried for the first time.

Born in Buenos Aires, Moreno Ocampo graduated from the University of Buenos Aires Faculty of Law in 1978.

From 1980 to 1984, he was an assistant secretary and legal secretary advising the General Attorney of Argentina on preparing judgments at the Supreme Court of Justice.

Previously, he had played a major role in Argentina's democratic transition (1983–1991).

As first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, his mandate was to establish the Office of the Prosecutor and decide where to initiate the first investigations.

Under his mandate, the Office of the Prosecutor analyzed 17 situations around the world and opened investigations in seven different countries.

He successfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity three heads of state, including the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir.

In 1985, he was assistant prosecutor in the Trial of the Juntas held before the Federal Chamber of Criminal Appeals to try the heads of the military juntas that governed Argentina during the last military dictatorship in 1976–1982.

There the prosecution proved criminal responsibility against the former presidents Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola, Admirals Emilio Massera and Armando Lambruschini, and Brigadier Orlando Agosti, who were convicted on 9 December 1985.

This was the first proceeding since the Nuremberg Trials where senior military commanders were prosecuted for mass killings.

Harvard Professor Kathryn Sikkink sees it as central to The Justice Cascade, which analyzes the human rights impact of trials on geopolitics and global justice.

For Moreno Ocampo, the trial of the juntas not only established the individual responsibility of Massera, Videla and the other commanders, but gave a voice and a face to the victims, who could explain what happened to them.

It changed those who did not believe in what had happened and ended the coups d'état forever.

In 1986 he was involved in cases against the Junta's subordinate commanders and officers.

One such was against General Ramón Camps, former chief of the Buenos Aires police, and eight other officers accused of murder, kidnapping and torture.

He also conducted trials for military negligence of those most responsible for the Malvinas–Falklands War, cases of corruption by senior government officials, and trials for the military rebellions of January 1988 and the last one in December 1990.

He was also part of a team sent to California to request extradition of General Guillermo Suárez Mason, which was done in 1988.

In 1988, he led the prosecution of the leaders of the carapintadas for two attempted coups in 1987 and 1990, and led the prosecution of Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Anaya and Basilio Lami Dozo for breach of military duty during the Falklands–Malvinas War.

He also led dozens of public corruption cases against federal judges, national ministers and heads of public companies.

In 1992, he left his position in the judicial system and began to work in the private sector from his law firm, conducting investigations into cases of corruption in the private and public sectors and violations of human rights.

In 1997, he hosted a reality television programme, Fórum, la corte del pueblo, in which he arbitrated private disputes.

In his own words, "It was a way of divulging the mechanisms of mediation... bringing to the TV show some of the rules of the judicial system, which are based on respect for the parties, and that they be heard".

Moreno Ocampo has been a visiting professor at the American Stanford (2002) and Harvard universities (2003), Hebrew University and USC, and a senior fellow at Yale University, Harvard University and New York University.

He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations.

He was a member of the advisory council of Transparency International and a founder of NGO Poder Ciudadano.

On 21 April 2003, Moreno Ocampo was unanimously elected first prosecutor of a new International Criminal Court.

On 16 June 2003, as the conflict with Iraq began, he sworn in for a non-renewable nine-year term as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

There were fears that the ICC would be unable to function, it its first nine years, the Office of the Prosecutor opened investigations in four states: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, the Central African Republic and Kenya – and in Darfur and Libya, at the request of the UN Security Council, and in Côte d'Ivoire at the request of its national authorities.

In his capacity as the prosecutor of the court, Moreno Campo initiated.

Moreno Ocampo led an investigation of leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, who in 2005 faced ICC arrest warrants for crimes against humanity.

Moreno Ocampo directed an investigation against Germain Katanga and Matthieu Ngudjolo Chui, who received arrest warrants in 2007 and 2008 for crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In March 2008, according to an Argentine online news report, Moreno Ocampo claimed that FARC, the largest guerrilla group in Colombia, should face an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

He began implementing preliminary tests in Colombia, which involved evaluating prosecutions of paramilitary commanders in Colombia, and interviews with victims of FARC, among others.

Moreno-Ocampo claimed that FARC could be investigated for crimes against humanity.

He visited Colombia in August, after which the ICC launched an investigation on the "support network for FARC rebels outside Colombia".

During his tenure at the ICC, the first trial ended with the conviction of Thomas Lubanga.

Luis Moreno Ocampo received the Legion of Honor of France and was distinguished in 2011 as one of 100 Global Thinkers by the publication Foreign Policy.

In the same year, The Atlantic included him among its "Brave Thinkers", a guide to people risking their reputations, fortunes and lives in pursuit of big ideas.