Swiss Official Picked to Head U.N. War Crimes Tribunal

Secretary-General Kofi Annan selected Swiss Atty. Gen. Carla del Ponte, who won recognition for investigating allegations of high-level Mexican and Pakistani money laundering, to serve as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal.

“I was looking for a strong and experienced prosecutor, and I think she is very good,” Annan said Friday after asking the Security Council to accept his choice.

Del Ponte, 52, has been the top Swiss legal official since 1994.

As attorney general, she scrutinized money laundering in Switzerland by Sicilian organized-crime gangs and helped Pakistan bring money-laundering charges against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Last October, she ordered $114 million confiscated from Swiss accounts linked to Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, charging that some of the deposits came from bribes for drug trafficking.

But Switzerland’s highest court overturned that seizure, ruling that she should have handed the matter to local authorities.

Del Ponte would replace Louise Arbour, who has been named to Canada’s Supreme Court. Arbour is expected to leave the prosecutor’s post by Sept. 15.

As head of the tribunal investigating alleged war crimes in the Balkans, Del Ponte will have responsibility for cases against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, four of his top advisors and other suspects.

She also will be in charge of tribunal investigations into genocide in Rwanda in 1994 during which at least half a million people were killed.

No date has been set for Security Council consideration, but Annan conferred with the council’s five permanent members before announcing his choice.

Asked on Friday whether he foresaw difficulties with the council over the appointment, Annan replied, “I shouldn’t expect any.”

The secretary-general, who conferred with Del Ponte at U.N. headquarters, said that several factors aided him in his decision.

“She has demonstrated professional capabilities, has strength and determination in what she has done in her own country, and she has worked with lots of prosecutors from other countries,” he said.

“Those relationships and that experience will come in very useful at the tribunal,” Annan added.

In recent weeks, teams of investigators from the tribunal have been unearthing bodies and conducting autopsies at multiple mass burial sites in Kosovo. Arbour has said that more indictments are likely.

The tribunal investigating war crimes in the Balkans has issued 65 public indictments. More than two dozen people are in custody.

Del Ponte, who studied law in England and Switzerland, was appointed investigating magistrate in 1981 and later became a public prosecutor in the office of the district attorney in the southern city of Lugano.

On April 1, 1994, she was nominated to be Switzerland’s attorney general.