A finales de 1980 decidí dar un curso sobre el conflicto israelo-palestino en la Universidad de Haifa. Al finalizar, y de acuerdo con sus preferencias, los estudiantes presentaron sus conclusiones en forma de proyectos o trabajos de investigación. Algún tiempo después, uno de aquellos estudiantes -Teddy Katz-, nacido en Haifa y miembro del kibutz Magal, decidió seguir investigando la suerte que corrieron varias aldeas palestinas -en particular la de Tantura- durante la guerra de 1948, y en 1998 presentó su tesis de maestría ante la Universidad de Haifa obteniendo como calificación un altísimo 97% (yo le hubiera dado un 100%). De las pruebas reunidas, Katz sacó una serie de conclusiones, entre otras que durante la ocupación de Tantura por las tropas judías unos 225 palestinos habían sido asesinados: 20 habrían muerto durante la batalla y el resto, civiles y no civiles desarmados, habrían sido ejecutados después de la rendición de la aldea. Meses después, a finales de enero de 2000, Teddy Katz fue entrevistado por Amir Gilat, un periodista del diario Ma’ariv; la reacción entre los veteranos de la Brigada Alexandroni responsable de la captura de Tantura fue casi inmediata: algunos de entre ellos se negaron a admitir la masacre pero otros, junto con los propios testigos palestinos, confirmaron los datos recogidos por Katz. No pasaría mucho tiempo antes de que los veteranos de la Alexandroni afectados por los resultados de esta investigación interpusieran contra Katz una denuncia por calumnias, demandándole por libelo y reclamando un millón de shekels como compensación.

Fuertemente presionado por la Universidad e incluso por su familia, en un momento de depresión que estuvo a punto de costarle la vida, Katz aceptó firmar una carta de disculpa donde se retractaba de lo publicado y donde admitía que en Tantura no había tenido lugar ninguna masacre, aunque enseguida se arrepintió. La juez Pilpel dio por cerrado el caso. La Universidad, sin embargo, ya había decidido lo que tenía que hacer y sus directores pidieron la anulación de la calificación obtenida acusando no solo a Katz de haber inventado muchas de las pruebas, sino también a mí por haberlo apoyado. Y es que después de pasar tres días y sus correspondientes noches escuchando las grabaciones que había realizado Katz con los testimonios y pruebas recogidos, no quedaba sino aceptar la heladora realidad de los monstruosos hechos sucedidos en Tantura. A partir de ese instante, comprendí claramente que mi obligación era defenderlos y darlos a conocer de todas las maneras posibles, así que hice un resumen y lo colgué en la página web de la Universidad para que todo el mundo pudiese leerlos. Propuse también que se convocara un panel de expertos para discutir el tema y averiguar si hubo o no una masacre, pero la Universidad lo rechazó, medida que terminaría provocando un boicot en su contra en lugar de un motivo más para enlucir su reputación en el mundo académico.

Desgraciadamente, Ben Artzi y especialmente Yoav Gelber consideraron que su única obligación era defender el sionismo olvidando la historia, de manera que al descalificar la tesis de Teddy fue como si enviaran un mensaje a cada estudiante de investigación y a cada profesor sin titularidad diciéndoles que si investigaban la historia de 1948 de un modo que contradijera la narrativa sionista no llegarían a ninguna parte. Fue entonces cuando descubrí con horror hasta qué punto mi propia Universidad había manipulado la historia al hacer desaparecer no solo los testimonios de los supervivientes de las aldeas palestinas arrasadas, sino también la evidencia de los crímenes cometidos durante la guerra de 1948. En aquella época -que coincidió con el inicio de la Segunda Intifada- mis críticas a la Universidad se sumaron a mi abierta oposición a las insensibles políticas de Israel en los territorios ocupados: restricción de alimentos a comunidades enteras, demolición de viviendas, asesinato de ciudadanos inocentes -muchos de ellos niños-, hostigamiento continuo en los checkpoints y, en general, la destrucción programada del entramado económico y social de la vida en los territorios.

Fue así como, sometido a un boicot de facto, me convertí en un paria dentro de mi propia Universidad. Amigos y colegas cancelaron las invitaciones a los cursos y seminarios que me habían enviado antes de que estallara el affaire Tantura, unos hechos que ponían al descubierto la brutal naturaleza de la limpieza étnica realizada por Israel en 1948 y -lo que todavía era más importante- su estrecha conexión con el proceso de paz y cualquier posible solución del conflicto. Fue mi compromiso y mi empeño en difundir estos hechos por lo que, seis meses después de acabarse con el tema Katz, me gané la declaración de persona non grata en mi propia Universidad y -como consecuencia- la primera respuesta de boicot académico a Israel por parte de la Asociación de Profesores Universitarios de Gran Bretaña (AUT por sus siglas en inglés) no solo en mi defensa -aunque también-.

Pienso, sinceramente, que un boicot general es necesario porque existe el imperativo moral de terminar con la ocupación y solo una presión exterior similar a la que en su tiempo se ejercía sobre el régimen de apartheid en Suráfrica podría tal vez lograrlo. El juicio en mi contra fue un intento de utilizar un procedimiento legal para librarse de mi persona y solo fracasó por el apoyo internacional que obtuve. En ese sentido, el boicot a las universidades israelíes forma parte de un creciente boicot del que no se habla y que afecta desde los productos a los cantantes israelíes, y que si se abatió sobre nuestras universidades fue porque ellas decidieron formar parte de la propaganda oficial, de esa elaborada publicidad que vende a Israel como la única democracia de Oriente Próximo y que en lugar de ejercer su papel de guardianas de la democracia se han convertido en las refrendarias de la ideología gobernante. No, no es posible ignorar todo eso, sobre todo cuando se hace en tu nombre.

El 27 de enero es el día establecido por Naciones Unidas para la conmemoración anual en memoria de las víctimas del Holocausto. En esa fecha, en 1945, el Ejército soviético liberó el mayor campo de exterminio nazi, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Este campo representa hoy una metáfora del mal inconcebible y monstruoso. Allí, a partir de septiembre de 1941, el asesinato en masa se convirtió en rutina diaria. Se mató a más de un millón de personas, y 9 de cada 10 eran judíos. Las víctimas llegaban en vagones de carga de tren, la mayoría proveniente de guetos y campos en la Polonia ocupada, pero también de casi todos los países de Europa occidental y oriental. Al llegar se separaba a los hombres de las mujeres y los niños. Se obligaba a los prisioneros a desvestirse y a entregar todos sus objetos de valor y se les metía en las cámaras de gas que estaban camufladas de duchas y se les asfixiaba con monóxido de carbono. La minoría seleccionada para realizar trabajos forzados quedaba expuesta a la malnutrición, epidemias, experimentos médicos y brutalidad. Muchos murieron de esta manera.

Más de medio siglo después, el horror de la Shoá sigue constituyendo un enigma indescifrable para el ser humano. La persecución y asesinato sistemático de seis millones de judíos por parte del régimen nazi, que se realizó con la ayuda activa de colaboradores locales en muchos países y con la aquiescencia o indiferencia de millones de personas.

Pero hubo también resistencia.

Hubo resistencia en casi todos los campos de concentración y guetos, en especial en el gueto de Varsovia entre abril y mayo de 1943, pero también en los de Vilna y Bialystok, o en Sobibor. Hubo resistencia institucional en áreas ocupadas por los nazis fuera de Alemania, como la que se produjo en Dinamarca en el otoño de 1943, donde, con el apoyo de la población local, se rescató a casi toda la comunidad judía de ese país escondiéndoles en un dramático viaje en barco hasta la segura y neutral Suecia. El recientemente desaparecido Jorge Semprún representa bien esa resistencia en áreas ocupadas por los nazis; una resistencia en la que participó activamente y por la que fue apresado por la Gestapo en 1943 y enviado al campo de concentración de Buchenwald. Fue marcado en su uniforme de preso con el número 44904.

Y hubo resistencia de individuos de otros países que arriesgaron sus vidas para salvar a los judíos y a otras personas perseguidas por los nazis. Uno de ellos fue Ángel Sanz Briz, diplomático español destinado en Budapest en 1942, que salvó la vida de entre 5.000 y 6.000 judíos en 1944, incluyendo la evacuación a Tánger de 500 niños judíos. Ángel Sanz Briz ha sido reconocido con el título de Justo entre las Naciones, que concede el Estado y el Pueblo de Israel a los no judíos que arriesgaron su vida para salvar a los judíos del Holocausto.

Y junto con esa resistencia activa, hubo una llamada resistencia espiritual contra la opresión nazi en los campos y guetos. La creación de instituciones culturales judías, la continuación de prácticas religiosas, y la voluntad de recordar y contar la historia de los judíos fueron intentos conscientes de preservar la historia y vida comunal del pueblo judío a pesar de los esfuerzos nazis de erradicarla.

La permanencia de esa voluntad de recuerdo representa hoy la resistencia más sólida a un Holocausto futuro. Su recuerdo, la educación sobre su significado histórico, y la acción prospectiva son esenciales si queremos que la historia no se repita. Debemos hacerlo a escala internacional, porque esa fue la escala del Holocausto, con el concurso de diplomáticos, expertos, científicos, educadores, comunidades judías, y de la sociedad en su conjunto. Y muy especialmente, siguiendo las recomendaciones del Protocolo de Ottawa para combatir el antisemitismo (noviembre de 2010), hemos de hacerlo comprometiendo tanto a las instituciones gubernamentales como a nuestros representantes en el Parlamento. Esta es la misión que más de 30 países hemos asignado a la Organización Internacional para el Recuerdo del Holocausto, de la que España forma parte desde el año 2008, y en la que participa de forma activa sobre todo a través de iniciativas orientadas al ámbito de la educación.

Nada nos garantiza que las generaciones futuras vayan a tener sensibilidad hacia sus minorías. Trabajemos pues con ellos, con la infancia, con la juventud. En Sefarad-Israel y la Federación de Comunidades Judías de España estamos convencidos de que la educación es clave para combatir el antisemitismo todavía latente en parte de la sociedad española. No se trata de intentar borrar la identidad del otro, sino de conocerla y comprenderla, poniendo de manifiesto la riqueza que representa la diversidad de nuestra sociedad e inculcando actitudes positivas ante la misma.

El poeta catalán Salvador Espriu decía a sus hijos: “Habré vivido para salvar estas pocas palabras que os dejo: el amor, la justicia, la libertad”. El verdadero valor del patrimonio de nuestro legado no es tangible, como demostraron las resistencias espirituales durante el Holocausto. Es, ante todo, una tarea de enseñanza, a conocer y a hacer, a ser y a vivir juntos.

On Monday, the French Senate is scheduled to debate and possibly vote on a bill that would criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, along with any other events recognized as genocide in French law. The bill has passed the lower house of Parliament. The Senate should reject it, in the name of free speech, the freedom of historical inquiry and Article 11 of France’s pathbreaking 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (“The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights.…”).

The question is not whether the atrocities committed against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire were terrible, or whether they should be acknowledged in Turkish and European memory. They were and they should be. The question is: Should it be a crime under the law of France, or other countries, to dispute whether those terrible events constituted a genocide, a term used in international law? And is the French Parliament equipped and entitled to set itself up as a tribunal on world history, handing down verdicts on the past conduct of other nations? The answer: No and no.

The bill also would criminalize “outrageous minimization” of the Armenian genocide. As Françoise Chandernagor of the Liberté pour l’histoire campaign points out, this introduces a concept vague even by the standards of such memory laws. If Turkish estimates of the Armenian dead run at 500,000 and Armenian estimates at 1.5 million, what would count as minimization? 547,000? And should the Turkish prime minister be arrested for such “minimization” on his next official visit to France? (The bill envisages a fine of 45,000 euros and up to a year’s imprisonment.)

Taking a benign view of human nature and French politics, you might say that this is a clumsy attempt to realize a noble intention. That would be naive. There is a remarkable correlation between such proposals in the French Parliament and national elections, in which half a million voters of Armenian origin play a significant part. What happened to the Armenians was recognized as genocide under French law in December 2001, just before presidential and parliamentary elections. A bill similar to this one was passed in the lower house in 2006 (but rejected by the upper) in the run-up to the 2007 elections. And what’s happening this year? Yes, elections.

Not that all leading politicians of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party have supported the bill. Foreign Minister Alain Juppé opposes it. But that’s because he’s worried about the implications for France’s relations with Turkey. The Turkish government’s reaction has been predictably vehement.

Thus a tragedy that should be the subject for grave commemoration and free historical debate, calmly testing even wayward hypotheses against the evidence, is reduced to an instrument of political manipulation, a politician’s brickbat.

Meanwhile, Turkish intellectuals who have bravely said that what was done to the Armenians was genocide are liable to be prosecuted in Turkey. What is state-ordained truth in France is state-ordained falsehood in Turkey.

Yet these are increasingly symbolic rather than effective acts. In a country like France, and with rather more difficulty in Turkey, the Internet allows people to find those forbidden views anyway.

So this is but the latest instance of a much wider challenge. What should be the limits and norms of free expression in the Internet age? And who should set them? These are among the questions being addressed in a project called Free Speech Debate (www.freespeechdebate.com) that we have just launched at Oxford University. Among the 10 draft principles we offer for debate, criticism and revision, one is especially relevant to the genocide controversy. It says, “We allow no taboos in the discussion and dissemination of knowledge.”

Memory laws like the one proposed in France clearly fail this test, but they are not the only example. In Britain, science writer Simon Singh had to defend a costly libel action because of his criticism of chiropractic claims. The Church of Scientology uses its copyright of the immortal words of L. Ron Hubbard to prevent people seeing the secrets of the Operating Thetan. (Tip: Search for Operation Clambake.) This week, the English-language Wikipedia site was blacked out for 24 hours to protest a proposed U.S. bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, that, in the current version, would have a disastrous chilling effect on the free, online dissemination of knowledge.

There are also more genuinely difficult cases. Late last year, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked the journals Science and Nature to redact details of a study about an easily transmitted form of the H5N1 virus, for fear it could be misused by bioterrorists. And what about AIDS denialism? When endorsed by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, this resulted, it has been estimated, in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise have been properly treated. The “no taboos” principle needs to be tested against such hard cases.

France’s opportunistic, misbegotten bill is not a hard case. It’s a no-brainer. Next week, let the French Senate give an example to the U.S. Congress in the defense of intellectual freedom.

Nearly 30 years ago, Greg told me how it was, cutting the ears off dead men.

I had sought out Vietnam veterans to interview for a story about a pop song that was inspired by the war, “19″ by Paul Hardcastle. Greg gave me an earful.

He explained how it is when the skin rots right off your foot. How it is when children are rigged to explode, so your first instinct is to shoot them when they come running up to you. How it is when the sight of an Asian face or the sound of a helicopter is enough to flash you from city streets to Vietnamese jungles. How it is living haunted days and nightmare nights, craving suicide but lacking “the guts.” And, yes, how it is that guys used to collect the ears from dead enemy soldiers as souvenirs, sometimes stringing them together and wearing them like grisly necklaces.

I think of Greg whenever it is time to pass judgment on the things soldiers do.

As it happens, much of the nation is now passing judgment on something a group of Marines did. In a video that has sparked international outrage, four of them are seen apparently urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters. The White House is embarrassed, there is speculation this will derail peace talks with the Taliban, and the four Marines are being both defended and reviled by the usual media and political figures.

Here’s a newspaper editorial bemoaning the damage to U.S. interests. Here’s a radio pundit saying she would gladly do as the Marines did. Here’s the White House calling the video deplorable. Here’s a presidential candidate reminding us these Marines were kids, not criminals.

But with Greg in mind, I can say only this: Your average, well-adjusted person does not go about with a necklace made of body parts, nor urinate on corpses, nor otherwise desecrate the bodies of the dead — even the dead and reviled. Your average, well-adjusted person would be repelled by the thought.

The point being, war is a different universe. What seems acceptable there is appalling here. It is not too much to say that war is a form of madness.

This is not to suggest those Marines ought not be criticized — not only for doing an awful thing but also, frankly, for being dumb enough to allow it to be recorded and posted online. It is not to suggest the government ought not be chagrined or that the rest of us should not be asking the White House pointed questions about indiscipline in the ranks — especially given that this comes in the wake of multiple scandals involving military mistreatment of enemy combatants, including the debacle at Abu Ghraib. It is not to suggest military service is a moral Get Out of Jail Free card.

No, this is only to suggest that our judgment be tempered by a recognition that these people have been in a place where the rules are different, that not every wound you carry out of such places is visible, and that in their way, the invisible wounds may be the costliest ones.

Greg spoke to me in a voice I can still hear all too clearly, a whisper soft and matter of fact as he recounted atrocities committed upon enemy soldiers — and the consequent degradation of his own soul.

I suspect he’d see this video as a reminder: War maims the body, yes. But it brutalizes conscience too.

Le rapport des juges Trévidic et Poux sur l’attentat du 6 avril 1994 contre l’avion du président rwandais Habyarimana, qui a été l’élément déclencheur du génocide des Tutsis, est formel : contrairement à ce qu’avait affirmé le juge Bruguière, ce ne sont pas les Tutsis du Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) qui en sont les auteurs.

Dès lors, la question se pose : qui sont les responsables de l’attentat ? Si le rapport n’en apporte pas la preuve matérielle, il désigne implacablement les extrémistes du “Hutu Power”. Ceux-là même qui, quelques heures à peine après l’attentat, érigèrent des barrages dans Kigali et distribuèrent des listes préétablies de Tutsis à éliminer comme des “Inyenzi” (“cafards”), mettant ainsi en application le plan génocidaire. Ceux-là même qui, au sein de la garde présidentielle, des forces armées et de la gendarmerie rwandaises, qui furent les fers de lance du génocide, reçurent formation et soutien de la part de militaires, gendarmes, coopérants et mercenaires français, sur ordres des plus hautes autorités de l’Etat.

Les discours négationnistes relayés, notamment en France, par des responsables politiques, hauts fonctionnaires, pseudo-historiens ou enquêteurs autoproclamés, s’écroulent.

L’écrire confine au ridicule mais le négationnisme, dans ce cas comme dans les autres, n’en est pas dépourvu : non, les Tutsis ne sont pas responsables du génocide qui a vu massacrer 800 000 des leurs. Non seulement parce qu’un attentat ne fait pas un génocide, mais également parce que les responsables de cet attentat ne sont pas Tutsis.

Pour faire admettre cette évidence pour ce qu’elle est, il aura fallu déconstruire, consciencieusement, pièce après pièce, un dossier Bruguière dont le manque de fiabilité des témoins-clés, qui sont revenus sur leurs déclarations, l’inexistence d’éléments matériels, Bruguière ne s’étant jamais rendu au Rwanda, et la fausseté des conclusions, en font plus un document de propagande qu’un rapport digne de la justice française.

Pourquoi donc Bruguière a-t-il élaboré ce rapport avant de mettre en examen plusieurs proches de Kagamé et de provoquer ainsi une rupture des relations diplomatiques entre la France et le Rwanda entre 2006 et 2010 ? S’il est difficile d’apporter des réponses définitives à cette question sans confondre conjectures et certitudes, il est par contre aisé de décrire les conséquences qu’a entraînées le rapport Bruguière.

Tout d’abord, il a renforcé les discours négationnistes, en permettant à de nombreux responsables politiques ou intellectuels de diffuser les thèses négationnistes de la responsabilité des Tutsis dans leur propre génocide, du “double génocide” ou encore de “l’autogénocide” du peuple rwandais contre lui-même dans une supposée explosion de violence tribale. Pierre Péan a ainsi soutenu la thèse du double génocide en partant de la supposée culpabilité de Kagamé, alors chef du FPR, dans l’attentat du 6 avril, qu’il affirmait avoir prouvée après une “enquête” tout aussi inconsistante que celle de son ami Bruguière.

Ensuite, il a apporté des protections à certains hommes politiques et très hauts fonctionnaires français qui portent une lourde responsabilité dans la préparation et la perpétration du génocide. En effet, certains ont, dans les années précédant 1994, soutenu les extrémistes hutus qui étaient en train de préparer le génocide. Certains ont, pendant que le génocide se déroulait, apporté un soutien sans faille au gouvernement génocidaire formé à l’ambassade de France, sous l’égide de l’ambassadeur Marlaud, le soir même du lancement du génocide.

Il a également permis de soustraire l’ancien gendarme de l’Elysée, le capitaine Paul Barril, à la mission d’information parlementaire de 1998. Pourtant, les éléments de réponse qu’il peut apporter à certaines questions devraient être particulièrement intéressants. A la veille du 6 avril 1994, il est vu à Kigali, où il confie être présent le 7. Où était-il le 6 au soir, au moment de l’attentat ? Le rapport Trévidic et Poux indique que les Forces armées rwandaises, dont le camp est selon toute vraisemblance le lieu de départ du missile qui a abattu le Falcon 50 de Habyarimana, n’avaient pas la formation militaire suffisante pour tirer le missile. Qui a tiré ? S’il faut bien évidemment le prouver, de lourds soupçons se portent naturellement vers les hommes de celui qui fut, pendant le génocide, un des vecteurs du soutien de l’Elysée au gouvernement génocidaire à qui il a fourni armes, propagande, comme dans la rocambolesque affaire de la vraie-fausse boîte noire, et mercenaires.

Il a enfin protégé de nombreux génocidaires, souvent exfiltrés en France grâce à l’armée ou à l’Eglise, qui ont pu jouir d’une impunité totale jusqu’à il y a quelque deux années.
Plus de dix sept années après le génocide, le rapport des juges Trévidic et Poux est donc salvateur, car, malgré toutes les tentatives de diversion, il fait progresser la vérité historique et la justice. Comme le disait Elie Wiesel en 1987 lors de sa déposition au procès de Klaus Barbie : “Le tueur tue deux fois, la première en tuant, et la seconde en essayant d’effacer les traces de son meurtre (…). La seconde ne serait pas de sa faute, mais de la nôtre.” C’est cette recherche de la vérité qui permet de faire reculer le négationnisme, donc d’honorer la mémoire des morts, d’apaiser les souffrances des rescapés et de leurs descendants, et d’apporter un supplément de lucidité et de repères moraux aux générations actuelles et futures.

El 24 de enero comienza el juicio contra el juez Garzón por su actuación jurisdiccional tras recibir múltiples denuncias sobre crímenes cometidos durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. Lo expresamos así porque conviene recordar que el impulso lo dieron víctimas individuales y asociaciones memorialistas que acudieron a la Audiencia Nacional exigiendo no solo reparación sino también verdad y justicia; o, por utilizar sus propias palabras, que acudieron a la Audiencia Nacional para pedir el “auxilio de la justicia”. El proceso pues que el juez Garzón abordó no fue una “ocurrencia” suya sino la respuesta que desde el derecho, nacional e internacional, merece cualquier víctima de graves violaciones a los derechos humanos, como se hizo con las víctimas de la dictadura argentina, por citar un ejemplo al que luego volveremos.

Conviene también recordar que el juez Garzón está suspendido en sus funciones por este procedimiento desde mayo de 2010; y que desde julio de 2011 solo estaba ya pendiente fijar fecha de celebración del juicio. Llamativo es, no obstante, que el Tribunal Supremo haya decidido que el primer juicio contra Garzón sea el de “las escuchas de Gürtel”; un proceso que, no olvidemos, nació después del que nos ocupa. Recordemos también que esta demora, que se suma a otras muchas, ha paralizado la resolución de dos cuestiones de competencia planteadas por dos de los juzgados a favor de los que se inhibió el Juzgado Central de Instrucción número 5 y cuya resolución está suspendida a resultas del enjuiciamiento del juez Garzón. Singular solución que ha alcanzando también a otros dos procesos por decisión de la Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra. Y así las cosas, el Tribunal Supremo nos dice que “necesita” pronunciarse primero sobre si el juez Garzón fue o no injusto al intentar investigar, antes de decidir sobre quién es competente para conocer de las denuncias de las víctimas.

No pocos dirán que resulta insólito que un juez sea enjuiciado por delito de prevaricación en tres procesos a la vez. Pero es un hecho que en España estas cosas pasan. Si en todo, o en parte, ello tiene que ver con el modelo de juez que se representa -uno que entiende la necesaria evolución del derecho para adaptarlo a los tiempos y proteger mejor a las víctimas-, estaríamos ante una situación muy perturbadora para el valor que constituye la independencia judicial como garantía en un Estado que se proclama de derecho.

No es el juez Garzón el único que ha sufrido virulentos ataques tras algunas de sus resoluciones; recordemos, si no, el calvario en su día de magistrados de la Sección 4ª de la Audiencia Nacional tras significarse de forma, digamos, políticamente incorrecta. Siempre ha habido jueces, y ojalá siga habiéndolos, que acuden a una interpretación y aplicación de las leyes -desde su respeto- innovadora y progresista, buscando una realización del derecho más justa, más ajustada con el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, como un todo, que busca por encima de todo proteger a los seres humanos.

¿Y qué interpretación hizo el juez Garzón en la “causa del franquismo”, esa que se está tachando de injusta sentándole por ello en el banquillo? Desde luego una cuya defensa desde el derecho internacional es plenamente sostenible. Legítimo sería discutirlo, como casi todo en derecho, pero tachar tal interpretación de “teorización creativa” y de actuación prevaricadora es un exceso sobresaliente, que bien parece partir de la completa ignorancia o desprecio de unas normas y principios de derecho internacional que no tienen otra finalidad que poner fin a situaciones ilícitas, acabar con la impunidad, a través de la materialización de los derechos de las víctimas a justicia, verdad y reparación.

Si inquietante resultó que el Poder Judicial diera paso a la acusación frente al juez Garzón, más que llamativo es que se le haya abierto juicio oral sobre la base de una acusación finalmente formulada al dictado de las orientaciones del instructor. Aunque, ciertamente, que a la defensa del juez Garzón se le hayan denegado medios de prueba tendentes a constatar el respeto de los estándares internacionales en la materia por considerar las opiniones de juristas internacionales como “una apriorística desconsideración” al Tribunal enjuiciador, es el hecho ante el cual las alarmas deben saltar. Pues la pregunta es evidente: ¿cómo es posible que un juez tenga que responder penalmente por haber hecho una interpretación legal conforme al derecho internacional como confirmarían múltiples especialistas? ¿Todos ellos formarían parte de una suerte de conjura de prevaricadores?

Cabe, con todo, una pregunta de mayor calado: ¿estamos ante un patrón de acoso a la independencia judicial? Sorprendente resulta que desde el ámbito de los jueces y desde el sector jurídico en general, en este punto, no se oigan voces. Ciertamente, reaccionar frente a los crímenes de la Guerra Civil y el franquismo es un tema incómodo para los poderes del Estado, también para una parte de la sociedad española; pero, como fuere, el Estado español no puede dejar de dar respuesta a las víctimas y sus familiares. Las obligaciones de los Estados en relación con legados de violaciones graves y masivas de derechos humanos, para ofrecer reparación a las víctimas, prevenir la repetición en el futuro y erradicar la impunidad, son tan claras como trascendentales.

“Hoy nos tocó a nosotros”. Este es el mensaje que nos enviaba un amigo argentino tras el anuncio de la condena a cadena perpetúa de Astiz y otros represores argentinos por desapariciones forzadas, torturas y homicidios cometidos durante la dictadura militar sufrida por aquel país. Esa justicia debida a las víctimas nos toca en verdad a toda la humanidad, y con particular afecto hemos podido celebrarlo en España porque, sin restar protagonismo a la valentía de la justicia argentina, lo cierto es que los procedimientos que se siguieron en España en su día desde el principio de jurisdicción universal jugaron entonces un papel crucial para que la Corte Suprema de la Nación de ese país desterrara las leyes de impunidad que impedían la investigación, el enjuiciamiento y eventual condena de los responsables de los horrendos crímenes de su dictadura. Otros países siguieron esa senda.

Y hoy es precisamente la misma justicia argentina la que está dando respuesta a víctimas de la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. El 13 de diciembre de 2011, una juez argentina exhortaba al Gobierno español a, entre otras cosas, proporcionar los nombres de ministros y altos cargos de las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado durante el periodo 1936-1977; la lista de personas asesinadas, desaparecidas y torturadas por motivos de persecución política, y de niños robados a sus familias, así como información sobre las fosas comunes, los cuerpos de desaparecidos identificados y las empresas beneficiadas del trabajo esclavo de los presos republicanos. Quiere ello decir, también y sobre todo, que la respuesta inicial del Estado español a través de la Fiscalía General del Estado (en orden a saber si había o no investigación sobre los crímenes denunciados) no ha satisfecho a la juez argentina por no cumplir con los estándares internacionales que debe reunir toda investigación para ser considerada efectiva, seria, independiente, completa, sin dilaciones indebidas. Tampoco podía ser de otra manera porque la realidad es que ningún juzgado español ha abordado investigación alguna sobre estos crímenes. Los que han recibido denuncias (fruto o no de la inhibición de la Audiencia Nacional) han terminado por archivar los procedimientos basándose en un argumento u otro pero, en definitiva, consagrando la imposibilidad de toda investigación en España.

La justicia española ha estado durante los últimos años a la vanguardia de la persecución de los crímenes internacionales, en gran medida gracias a la labor del juez Garzón. Ahora, llegado el momento de dar respuesta a los crímenes cometidos en el propio territorio, el Estado no solo está propugnando lo contrario que entonces, sino que persigue a aquel que sí lo ha intentado.

The video showing Marines urinating on dead enemy bodies in Afghanistan has refocused America’s attention on the behavior of service members. We have been painfully aware of the strategic implications of this kind of action since we saw the photos from Abu Ghraib. How could something like this happen now? Something is broken.

We remember with sorrow the U.S. service members and contractors killed in combat whose bodies were desecrated by our enemies. The humiliations visited on bodies raise feelings of disgust for the enemy and empathy for our own, compounded by the pointlessness of the humiliations. It would be useful to assume that our enemies feel likewise today. To prevent this from happening again, or at least for the U.S. service members to be able to look themselves in the mirror and honestly say we did everything we possibly could to prevent it, leaders at every level must make unequivocally clear that they expect their troops’ best behavior, even in the worst circumstances.

Americans share in responsibility. Gratitude for hard work and sacrifice should not lead us to mistakenly excuse reprehensible conduct by service members. Our behavior toward the enemy is too often excused because so many Americans do not believe the enemy is worthy of respect, relying perhaps on memories of dehumanized foes in Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

Every service member goes through countless legal briefs explaining the general orders and international law forbidding desecration of dead bodies, as well as the taking of pictures and videos of the enemy. Despite this training, the Marines in the video probably did not give the wrongfulness of urinating on dead bodies consideration.

Knowledge of the law only goes so far in creating legal conduct. Character, situations, personal morals, group ethics, peer pressure, the length and number of deployments and a host of other variables contribute to service member evaluations of right and wrong. Knowing this, how can the armed forces ensure good behavior among the ranks, even when dealing with the people who are trying to kill them?

From junior noncommissioned officers to commanders at the highest levels, leaders have a credibility and influence over their troops that no outsider or subject matter expert ever can. At no level can a wink and a nod that “things happen in war” be tolerated. Clarity in expectations and orders, as well as leaders’ actions, will create a command emphasis that transforms someone capable of doing something wrong into someone who never will.

It was more than six years ago, but the massacre that took place at Haditha, western Iraq, in November 2005, still resonates in the Middle East. The now notorious war crime, which left 24 Iraqis dead, became one of the defining atrocities of the war, and the taste remains all the more bitter for survivors – some of whom are children who lost parents in the attack – with the knowledge that not a single US marine has been brought to justice.

The soldier who led his unit into the houses of innocent civilians and shot to kill, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, has been giving evidence in court in the US this week. The trail takes place against a backdrop of failed prosecutions, bartered immunities and botched investigations. Yet the need for a conviction and the acceptance of wrongdoing at the hands of American troops remains of the utmost importance if the US is ever to lay claim to the idea it has a determination to uphold the rule of law.

Following an IED explosion inside the city that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas and injured two other marines of 3/1 Kilo Company, the rest of the unit went on a rampage under the leadership of Wuterich. A taxi driver and his passengers were ordered out of the car and shot dead, nearby houses were subsequently raided, sprayed indiscriminately with bullets and hand grenades.Among the dead were a large number women and children. What followed was an attempted cover-up, with press releases describing the civilian casualties as a result of the initial bombing . It wasn’t until probing by Iraqi human rights investigators and US journalists that the truth began to emerge. This was Bush’s My Lai, or, as Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha later put it: “cold blooded murder”.

My film, Battle for Haditha, which recreated the incident in all its brutality, split critics along political lines and drew cries of “unpatriotic” at a screening in front of marines in Los Angeles. Eight of those charged had their charges dropped and one was acquitted, leaving just Wuterich to stand.

But if there was any doubt that the killings that day could be classed as anything other than war crimes, a number of incriminating documents have come to light in the past few weeks that place guilt beyond doubt. Some 400 pages from the military interrogation of the offending troops, which should have been destroyed as the Americans left Iraq last year, were uncovered by a New York Times reporter at a junkyard in Baghdad. One statement from a marine says Wuterich told his men to “shoot first and ask questions later”, another witness recalls seeing Wuterich and other marines telling occupants of the taxi to kneel down before spraying them with bullets, . One statement from soldier Steven Tatum, who has already been granted immunity, shows he changed his recollection of the day to admit he knew he was firing upon children at the time. Also recovered are the failed polygraph results of Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, who responded “no” on both counts when asked if he shot men at close range and kneeling down, and who later confessed he was told by Wuterich to lie about what happened that day.

Of course we should be wary of only blaming the foot soldiers. We should question the rules of engagement they were operating under and understand that many of those involved that day had previously served in Fallujah, where indiscriminate killing was carried out without reproach.

When researching the film I interviewed a number of troops from Kilo Company, none of whom are implicated in the crime but who arrived at the scene shortly after. Their mentality is difficult to put into words. Anyone who has seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now might have a flavour of it. It’s a thought process that justifies wanton, crazed killing, that demands a high five when a fellow soldier announces they’ve killed an innocent child. A completely different value system, and one that’s distinct from any I’ve seen before. This video of marines shown urinating over corpses in Afghanistan which come to light this week and has drawn widespread rebuke has a sick similarity to Dela Cruz’s admission that: “I pissed on one of the dead Iraqi male occupants of the white car [during the massacre] … I remember that I pissed inside the head of the dead Iraqi, the one with half of his head blown off.”

Not a single marine I interviewed was able to survive after their tour without a tranquilliser prescription. One who photographed the massacre after it happened simply lost the plot and, after tanking himself up on alcohol, drove a truck into a neighbouring house. All of them were hell-bent on returning to Iraq, where the chaotic way of life appeased their mindset. It’s worth remembering that most were just teenagers when they joined the force.

The Iraqi families who turned down the insulting offer of $2,500 in compensation for each family member killed are still waiting to see justice done. As do we all, and to see if the hypocrisy of the Bush era, with its willful disregard for the Geneva conventions, the rule of law, and every other yardstick of a civilised democracy, will continue under the Obama administration. Several of us have been trying to organise a victims’ fund for the Haditha family survivors, but their greatest concern is to see justice done. It’s a matter of honour.

In March I returned from Afghanistan’s Helmand province after handing about 12 square miles of villages and farmlands to the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, the unit that is allegedly responsible for recording a video of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban insurgents. The actions of these few Marines have rightfully garnered widespread disdain, but for me the affront is personal. In a 42-second video, these Marines undid everything that my unit spent seven months working to accomplish.

Many civilians I’ve talked to about the incident act like it’s no surprise. Hollywood and media depictions have convinced them that war is filled with atrocities such as this one and that, but for lack of coverage, they’d hear more about them.

But those of us who have worn the uniform don’t excuse these acts by saying, “War is hell.” There’s right and wrong in war, and we probably know that better than anyone else, because we’ve seen the life-or-death consequences of our decisions.

Before my first deployment, though, I wondered if it was true. People don’t usually talk about the wars they fight in. Maybe it’s because the things they would say are dark and unjustifiable. But then I went to Iraq and Afghanistan, where I faced combat and death, and I discovered that it’s nothing of the sort.

There’s a shock the first time you deal with the aftermath of combat, but that soon subsides because there is a lot of work to be done. We would collect enemy bodies so we could engage in the macabre task of identifying them and gathering intelligence. When that was done, we’d hand the bodies over to the Afghan soldiers and police we worked with so that they could receive proper burial.

In my unit, I’m not ashamed to admit, we celebrated the death of the enemy. After one hard day in 2010 when we lost a Marine, we discovered two insurgents planting a bomb along a road. As the insurgents drove away, we shot a missile at them, killing one. Alongside the jubilation, we felt that justice had been served.

At the same time, the insurgent who survived the blast was brought by locals to one of our bases for medical attention. So amid the euphoria, we also provided aid to the enemy. Doing so was required to accomplish our mission of building local support.

But celebrating victory in battle is different than desecrating the dead. And it’s discipline and training that not only keep your moral compass pointing north, but also give you the courage to stop what you know is wrong. That’s what I saw time and again with 20-year-old corporals and lance corporals leading their units, ensuring that they didn’t stray from right into wrong. And that sense of morality is what I see missing in the video.

I can’t imagine what went through the heads of the men in the video, because desecrating the dead goes against every custom and value that the Marines hold dear. When the enemy is dead, they’re no longer treated like combatants. Despite the mortal conflict you’ve just engaged in, their humanity is revealed by their death. And in Afghanistan, you often have to look their family members in the eye as you hand over the body of their dead father, brother or son.

My mission with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines Regiment was to make our sector of northern Helmand province safe for Afghan civilians through a combination of state-building, political development and security operations. The fight was tough and the enemy frustrating, but we were successful because of our commitment to winning over the local populace.

During our deployment, we worked to make the roads safe, strengthen the local economy, and befriend villagers and our Afghan army and police counterparts. We knew that building trust required thousands of cups of chai, countless meals sitting cross-legged on mud hut floors and a deep respect for the local culture and traditions. Five Marines in my company died in Afghanistan doing just this. After returning to the United States, we stood at a memorial for them and told their families that their sacrifices weren’t in vain.

It was true then. But is it now?

Marines and all other service members understand intuitively the effect that this video will have on the war. Whatever comes of an investigation, this is a significant blow. Already, some are saying that this will affect peace talks. But the consequences for the Marines on the ground will be felt in the increase in bombs under their feet and bullets flying by their heads.

Before I left Afghanistan, we worked with the local government to install cellular towers in the area where this video was shot. Now, with a basic cellphone from the local bazaar, members of the Taliban can show villagers at every shura in the district what Marines do to Muslims when they’re dead.

That’s why my fellow Marines and I are infuriated by this video. We know there’s no moral gray area when it comes to dealing with the dead. When you’ve killed your enemy, the fight is over — and in Afghanistan, you hand the bodies over for a Muslim burial. If we can handle Osama bin Laden’s body with respect, we can do the same for an insurgent fighting for what he believes is his family pride.

My old unit is going back to Afghanistan now. Talking to the Marines before they left, I knew they were going into a tough fight. They’re headed to an area not too far from where we and the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines were stationed last year, and they’re going to do the right thing. Because that’s what the military does.

Except the fight just got a lot tougher.

The video that emerged in recent days appearing to show four U.S. Marines urinating on several dead Taliban fighters has outraged many people in this country. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have condemned the act, the military has promised an inquiry, and some experts are even suggesting that the act could qualify as a war crime.

Mainly, however, people seem simply to not understand it. Why would America’s warriors — for that matter, why would anyone — urinate on a dead body?

I spent a year, off and on, with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of casualties and an enormous amount of stress on the men I was with. I never saw anyone do anything like this, but then again, I never saw any dead Taliban fighters — the enemy always recovered their casualties before we could get there.

Nevertheless, the things the soldiers shouted during combat were very revealing of the state of mind that war produces. (For the record, I’m sure the Taliban was screaming pretty much the same things about us.) At one point a Taliban fighter had his leg shot off during a firefight and was crawling around on the hillside, dying, and the men I was with cheered at the sight. That cheer deflated me. I liked these guys tremendously, but that celebration was just so ugly. I didn’t want them to be like that.

Later, I asked one of them about it, and he explained that they had been happy because they were that much closer to all going home alive. They weren’t cheering the enemy’s death; they were cheering their own lives. That particular fighter would never again be able to kill an American soldier.

In a statement issued Thursday, Gen. Jim Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, said that “the behavior depicted in the video is wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history.”

Yet, I can’t imagine that there was a time in human history when enemy dead were not desecrated. Achilles dragged Hector around the walls of Troy from the back of a chariot because he was so enraged by Hector’s killing of his best friend. Three millennia later, Somali fighters dragged a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu after shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter and killing 17other Americans. During the frontier wars in this country, white Americans routinely scalped Indian fighters, and vice versa, well into the 1870s.

The U.S. military should be held to a higher standard, certainly, but it is important to understand the context of the behavior in the video. Clearly, the impulse to desecrate the enemy comes from a very dark and primal place in the human psyche. Once in a while, those impulses are going to break through.

There is another context for that behavior, though — a more contemporary one. As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put bullets through the fighters’ chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed.

But of course they have dehumanized the enemy — otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrate a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven’t just committed their first murder — that they have simply shot some coyotes on the back 40.

It doesn’t work, of course, but it gets them through the moment; it gets them through the rest of the patrol.

There is a final context for this act in which we are all responsible, all guilty. A 19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it’s okay to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not okay to urinate on a dead one.

When the war on terror started, the Marines in that video were probably 9 or 10 years old. As children they heard adults — and political leaders — talk about our enemies in the most inhuman terms. The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions — achieved through torture — will not stand up in court.

For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living.

I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don’t have the faintest idea.

England’s former secretary of education, Kenneth Baker, ignited a controversy last month by proposing that the Holocaust be removed from school curricula, lest it cause students to think badly of modern-day Germany.

Ironically, during the Holocaust itself, British and American officials likewise worried that too much focus on the mass murder of the Jews would cause political or other problems.

For example, officials of the British Foreign Office in August 1942 prevented a member of Parliament from transmitting a report about the killing to Jewish leaders in the United States on the grounds that it might, as they put it, “annoy the Germans.” On another occasion, a Foreign Office official worried that publicity over the slaughter would compel his colleagues “to waste a disproportionate amount of their time in dealing with wailing Jews.”

Officials of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration were concerned that too much emphasis on the persecution of the Jews would increase pressure on the United States to take action to help them. Thus, at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s insistence, all references to Jews were omitted from a leaflet dropped over Europe in 1944, warning civilians not to collaborate with the Nazis. President Roosevelt’s 1944 statement commemorating the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt – a rebellion by Jewish fighters – did not mention Jews. Allied leaders meeting in Moscow in 1943 threatened postwar punishment for Nazi war crimes against “French, Dutch, Belgian or Norwegian hostages … Cretan peasants … [and] the people of Poland,” but not Jews.

A desire to push aside the Holocaust affected even the Allies’ postwar policies.

In his study of the British government’s attitude toward punishing Nazi war criminals, professor Arieh Kochavi found that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden favored prosecuting only a limited number of Nazis, for fear of “a situation in which trials might drag on for years and thus delay the return to a peaceful atmosphere in Europe.” The U.S. high commissioner in postwar Germany from 1949 to 1952, John J. McCloy, pardoned numerous Nazi war criminals in the hope of strengthening U.S.-German relations.

In more recent times, the desire to downplay the Holocaust has made for some strange bedfellows. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find any other issue on which such disparate figures as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman could find common ground.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson reportedly complained in 1979. He said he resented “having America be in put in the position of a guilt trip.” Given Mr. Jackson’s own list of accusations about America’s behavior at home and abroad, one may suspect his problem with the Holocaust was that it was drawing attention away from his own pet causes and preferred victims.

Mr. Friedman, for his part, charged in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” that “Israel today is becoming Yad Vashem with an air force.” He claimed that an excessive focus on the Holocaust among Israelis is to blame for, among other things, their impatient driving habits, unethical business dealings, meek acceptance of high taxes, and reluctance to make more concessions to the Arabs.

The good news, though, is that the American public, at least, does not seem to share such narrow-mindedness. Movies with Holocaust themes continue to attract substantial audiences and critical acclaim. The book “In the Garden of Beasts,” which deals largely with the persecution of Jews in Hitler Germany in the 1930s, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for more than six months, and Miklos Nyiszli’s memoir, “Auschwitz,” has been an e-book best-seller for more than four months.

It seems that ordinary Americans understand – far better than some partisan grumblers – that there is still value in studying the Holocaust and the world’s response to it.

On the brisk winter Tuesday of Jan. 20, 1942, 15 Nazi officials assembled at a lakeside villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to deliberate on the “final solution.” This month, the world marks the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, one of the pivotal moments in Holocaust history. It provides an appropriate occasion not only for reflecting on the origins and implications of this horrific event, but also on one particular moment when it could have been prevented and, I would posit, almost was.

The extermination of European Jews may have been formally outlined seven decades ago this month, but it began nearly nine years earlier, during Easter Week 1933, a few minutes after five o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, April 12, when four Jews — Arthur Kahn, Ernst Goldmann, Rudolf Benario and Erwin Kahn — were executed in precisely that order at a Nazi camp in the obscure Bavarian hamlet of Prittlbach.

These four killings framed the constituent parts of the genocidal process formalized at the Wannsee Conference: intentionality, chain-of-command, selection, execution. In the years to come, the process was refined, the numbers expanded monstrously, but the essential elements remained.

Even Prittlbach retained its central role. The hamlet was so small that the Nazis named their camp after the neighboring town of Dachau, which had access to a rail line. The boxcars rolled into Dachau, but the victims were marched to Prittlbach.

The Konzentrationslager Dachau in Prittlbach became the prototype for Nazi atrocity. It boasted the first crematory oven, the first gas chamber, and, on that sun-splashed spring day in April 1933, the first Jewish victims.

A Holocaust survivor once told me, and repeated to many others with equal conviction, that the trail of blood that began in Dachau ultimately led to Auschwitz. But it also almost ended there before it barely began.

On that same April evening in 1933, Joseph Hartinger received a call that four men had been shot attempting to flee the recently erected detention facility. As a local prosecutor, it was Hartinger’s job to establish a commission to investigate all deaths resulting from “unnatural causes.”

The blood was still damp on the ground when Hartinger arrived. He sensed immediately that something was horrifically wrong. “My reasons were based not only on the physical circumstances but in particular on my assessment of the personalities I encountered in the camp and especially on my evaluation of the nature of the camp commandant Wäckerle, who made a devastating impression on me,” Hartinger recalled. “I also had to include in my deliberations the fact that those who had been shot were all Jews.”

When Hartinger reported that a serial killing of Jews had taken place, his superior responded unequivocally: not even the Nazis would do that. The investigation was terminated.

But as killings continued to mount, Hartinger persisted. On June 1, 1933, he issued indictments against the camp commandant and three other SS men. It was a brazen act of legal defiance to the regime. Hartinger was not naïve. He knew the Nazi capacity for violence. That evening, he told his wife, “I just signed my own death sentence.”

The murder indictments had a surprising impact. The commandant was removed. The killings stopped. Hartinger had hurled a legal wrench into the Nazi bureaucracy and singlehandedly paralyzed its homicidal impulse.

For several weeks in the summer of 1933, the killings stalled as Nazi officials attempted to understand the implications of the Hartinger indictments. Solutions were found. The killing was renewed. Miraculously, Hartinger survived. The Nazis had deliberated on murdering him. Instead, he was transferred to another jurisdiction.

Recently, I came across the 40-page unpublished memoirs that Hartinger wrote in 1984 shortly before his death at age 91. Along with many technical details already familiar to scholars, Hartinger outlined an extraordinary plan for dismantling the emerging system in the Dachau Concentration Camp.

He understood that the Nazi regime, just a few months in power, was still sensitive to international opinion. It was his intention to use the murder indictments to expose publicly the atrocities in Dachau, force the government to evict the SS guards and replace them with trained police or military units familiar with the laws governing the proper detention and treatment of prisoners. It was a seemingly quixotic plan, but Hartinger understood the key decision makers within the government and sought to play them against one another.

He almost succeeded. “These were not fantasies,” Hartinger recalls in his memoirs. “As I later learned, there were conversations in exactly this direction except that the ‘good spirits’ did not prevail.”

But his indictments confounded the Nazi legal bureaucracy. In the end, the only recourse was to lose them. They were locked in a desk and forgotten.

After the war, the abandoned indictments were discovered by a U.S. intelligence unit and returned to German prosecutors who used them to convict the surviving perpetrators.

The Hartinger memoirs show us in nuanced detail the political, legal and emotional dynamics that led to the first serial killing of Jews in Nazi Germany. Equally important, they show us that tenuous phase of an emerging genocidal process when intercession could have disrupted and derailed the horrific and now seemingly inevitable outcome.

Clearly, no single man could have prevented the Holocaust, except Hitler himself, but had there been more Germans like Hartinger to hold individual Nazis personally accountable for their excesses, including President Paul von Hindenburg, who possessed the constitutional authority to dissolve the Nazi government at will and dismiss Hitler as chancellor, the course of history could have taken a very different turn.

The Hartinger memoirs make this fact abundantly clear, preserving for us that ineffable substance of the human soul — faith, hope, fear and courage — that shapes individual decisions and ultimately determines the course of actions, both large and small, that constitute the chain of events we know as history.

Hartinger may have lacked the aristocratic bearing of Raul Wallenberg. He certainly possessed neither the charm nor wiles of Oskar Schindler. He was little more than a middle-aged civil servant with a wife and five-year-old child at home. But like these two legendary figures of Holocaust rescue, Joseph Hartinger demonstrated the potential of personal courage, intelligence and determination in a time of collective human failure. He also provides further proof of the transcendent and enduring power of justice.

In December 1942, when I was 13 years old, German troops occupied my hometown. Within days, our house was commandeered as an officers’ mess hall. I soon had a yellow star on my dress, setting me apart from many of my childhood friends. The men of our family were ordered into forced labor. My happy life had vanished.

Luckily, an influential local man knew of our difficult straits and generously offered his protection. One night, he ferried the women, children and old men in our family to a farm he owned about 20 miles outside of town. There, he said, we would be safe. Though the stables he provided us for lodging were modest, with just a drape across the door to protect against the elements, we were relieved to be behind the thick, high walls of his property. We were deeply grateful.

As luck would have it, however, a German unit arrived in the area not long after we did. Our host told us to get rid of our yellow stars, stay inside the farm walls and keep far away from the main house. He had his own strategy for dealing with the Germans. A bon vivant and world traveler, he invited German officers for evenings filled with food and drink. While nearly two dozen of us were hiding in one part of the farm, he protected himself from the prying eyes of the Germans by entertaining them on the other side of the farm.

Our host’s strategy worked well, until the night a couple of drunken German officers wandered away from the main house.

In the courtyard outside the stables, they started banging on the courtyard door and shouting, “We know you are Jews and we’re coming to get you!”

My grandmother started screaming “Cachez les filles!” — “Hide the girls!” I remember being shoved under the bed, trembling and sobbing as I tried to hide under a blanket.

At that moment of unspeakable fear, as our hearts pounded and tears poured from our eyes, a guardian angel came to the rescue. Out of nowhere, our host appeared. A strong, powerful man who projected authority and commanded respect, he stopped the Germans and managed to lead them away.

The next day, our host came to the stables. We rushed to express our thanks to him, but he was more eager to apologize to us. He said he was sorry that we had to face the terrifying ordeal of the Germans’ threats, expressed relief that he had intervened in time to prevent a horrible tragedy, and promised that it would never happen again. We never found out how he fulfilled his promise — perhaps he bribed the Germans — but he did. We passed the rest of the German occupation at our host’s farm, without incident.

During the horrors of the Holocaust, non-Jews saved many thousands of Jews from death and depravity at the hands of Germans and their allies. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial museum, has recognized more than 23,000 of these brave men and women as “The Righteous Among the Nations.” Our family’s rescuer deserves to be among that number. And in his case, the impact of recognition would have powerful reverberations, striking a blow against Holocaust denial in a part of the world where such denial is widespread.

That is because my hometown is Mahdia, on the eastern shore of Tunisia, and our rescuer, Khaled Abdul Wahab, was an Arab Muslim. (He passed away in 1997.)

So far, however, Abdul Wahab has been denied the recognition he deserves. Nearly five years ago, in January 2007, the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem nominated him to be a “righteous,” the first Arab ever to be formally considered for this honor. This nomination was based on witness testimony from my late sister, Anny Boukris. In March of that year, however, the official Commission for the Designation of the Righteous, a body presided over by a retired Israeli judge and created by Israeli law to decide who merits recognition as a “righteous,” voted to reject the nomination. That decision was kept secret for two years.

In 2010, that same jurist, Justice Jacob Tuerkel, sent the Abdul Wahab file back to the commission for a second review. This time, the case was bolstered by two fresh testimonies — a video interview of my cousin Edmee Masliah, who was with me at the farm and now lives outside Paris, and a notarized letter I wrote recounting my own experience. Yad Vashem now had three firsthand accounts of the story. But to my complete dismay, the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous once again voted to reject the nomination. Abdul Wahab was a noble man, I was told by Yad Vashem, but his actions did not rise to the statutory level required to merit the “righteous” designation — that is, he didn’t “risk his life” to save Jewish lives.

While that may be the wording of the law, I am told by experts that Abdul Wahab would not be the first rescuer of Jews not to have suffered physical harm, let alone life-threatening danger. Many in France who have won that designation were honored because they acted to save Jews without knowing for sure what fate would await them if they were caught. In addition, some of the famous diplomats honored as righteous were never arrested, injured or threatened with death for aiding Jews.

I refuse to believe that Yad Vashem has one standard for “righteous” in Europe and another for “righteous” who performed their sacred duty on the other side of the Mediterranean, in an Arab country.

Sixty-nine years after pinning a yellow star to my chest in my native land, I know that I was able to enjoy a long, full life because Abdul Wahab confronted evil and saved me, as he saved other fortunate members of my family. I hope that Yad Vashem reconsiders his case before no one is left to tell his story.

Fair trials rarely emerge from the fog of war. The victors not only tell the tale but render judgment on it. That is why I would prefer a truth and reconciliation commission to Libyan trials of Saif Gaddafi; or for Lord Woolf, whose report on Gaddafi’s relationship with the London School of Economics was released last week, to preside over a trial.

Although Gaddafi has so far avoided the terminal vengeance visited on his father, a trial by Zintan militiamen or Transitional National Council members who are themselves in permanent transition is hardly likely to be very clarifying, let alone fair. The international criminal court is probably the best bet for justice (though one worries about Nato’s influence), but also the least likely venue.

For Libya to make the difficult move from revolution (killing tyrants) to democracy (establishing free institutions and creating free Libyan citizens), Gaddafi must be tried. The story of his own role in the runup to the insurgency – including his time at the LSE, his international foundation work, and his putative leadership in helping forge a reform coalition that included key TNC members like Mahmoud Gebril and Abdul Jalil – needs to be heard. For that story is a counterpoint to his subsequent betrayal of all he said he believed in. Since the TNC wishes not only to investigate Gaddafi’s role during the insurgency, but to examine issues of corruption, abuse of state funds, torture and murder under the supposed regime, it should welcome a more encompassing inquiry.

The model is the Woolf commission, which looked at Gaddafi’s relationship with the LSE as a PhD student and a donor. Gaddafi’s dissertation and the book (Manifesto) he wrote afterwards speak to his beliefs and principles, so whether they expressed his own ideas and whether he actually wrote them is of real consequence to judging the authenticity of his “liberalism”.

The Woolf report is a compendium of prudent warnings about dealing with students from developing countries who may become leaders – but if Lord Woolf is appropriately lucid about the need for far greater care in these matters, he also makes clear that “Saif Gaddafi’s ideas were his own”. The University of London confirmed this with its decision not to revoke his PhD. Since much of the distrust of Gaddafi’s posture as a reformer and liberal before the revolution has rested on the claim that the degree was fraudulent, this conclusion is of critical importance. In fact, there has not been much dispute about what Saif Gaddafi was doing in Libya, only whether he was sincere or just posturing.

I believe the Woolf Commission’s report also supports the position that Gaddafi was an original thinker, a democratic reformer who was taking risks on behalf of change, bringing the likes of Jalil and Gebril into government. In fact, Gaddafi took risks from 2003 when he helped negotiate the surrender of weapons of mass destruction that led to Libya’s opening to the west, then helped free the four Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor being held on bogus charges of infecting children with Aids (in Benghazi), and played a key role in negotiating the Lockerbie settlement. He was also instrumental in the release of Hakim Belhaj from a Libyan prison where Muammar Gaddafi had dumped him at the request of the US. Belhaj is the militia leader and former al Qaida member who took Tripoli during the summer.

Though the media still refer to Saif Gaddafi as his father’s “heir apparent”, Saif forcefully refused that role, insisting he would never take a position that was not subject to elections, turning down roles offered by his father at some peril.

In truth, the anomaly is not what Saif Gaddafi did before the revolution, but what he did once it began – abandoning nearly a decade of studies and turning his back on the risky reform work he had done. But even during the insurgency, and despite his Michael Corleone-style turnaround, Saif Gaddafi still sought to find a peaceful way out. He reached out to South Africa, to the Turks and to others with schemes that would force his father to step down but let him retire in Libya. Nonetheless, in aligning himself with family and clan, he was destroying the hopes of peaceful reform he had once inspired.

The question remains precisely what Saif Gaddafi did do during the insurgency. Was he merely a cheerleader for the regime, or was he giving orders? His brothers Mutassim and Khemis commanded brigades engaged in brutal deeds. What of Saif? My guess is that the evidence here will be more circumstantial than definitive.

No one who watched Muammar Gaddafi being killed by his captors can avoid feeling that procedural justice was being defiled even as a certain historical justice was being meted out. As for his son, Saif Gaddafi may deserve prison for what he did during the insurgency, but for a decade his heart was on the side of reform and democracy. Unless there is compelling evidence of direct orders to kill civilians or of command over troops involved in killing, he does not deserve a death sentence. The people of Libya today rightly cry for justice, but if they are just they will recognise that there is no simple formula in this case.

The weekend capture of Moammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam and Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, has precipitated a debate between Libya’s new government, the National Transitional Council, and international human rights groups over whether the two should be prosecuted by a Libyan court or turned over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. International human rights advocates argue that Saif and other Gaddafi regime officials cannot receive a fair trial in that country. While these groups have cause for concern, the Obama administration and the international community should leave the decision to the Libyans. They should offer to assist the new Libyan government rather than try to supplant it.

Like many Arab countries, Libya is not a party to the 1998 treaty that created the ICC — known as the Rome Statute — and is not subject to the general criminal jurisdiction of that court. But the U.N. Security Council’s February resolution referring the Gaddafi regime’s attacks on Libyan civilians to the ICC prosecutor for investigation and requiring “Libyan authorities” to cooperate with the court had the international legal effect of subjecting Gaddafi and Libyan officials to the ICC’s jurisdiction. And in June, the ICC indicted Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam and Senussi for murder and crimes against humanity, and issued warrants for their arrest.

The murky circumstances of Gaddafi’s death, which suggest that he may have been executed after capture by Libyan rebel forces, have prompted human rights groups to call for Saif al-Islam to be transferred to The Hague. Recalling the rapid show trials and executions of Saddam Hussein and senior Baath Party officials by the Iraqi High Tribunal, they argue that the Libyan opposition cannot be trusted to provide criminal trials that meet “international” standards.

After 42 years of Gaddafi’s authoritarian rule, Libya lacks an independent judiciary and criminal law enforcement system. It could take a substantial period for fair judicial institutions to be established. The new Libyan government also says it wants to preserve the death penalty as an option, and this would be anathema to European countries and many human rights groups.

National Transitional Council officials insist that Saif al-Islam and Senussi must be tried in Libya because “local justice is the rule and international justice is the exception.” The pair will be given a fair trial, they argue.

As the recognized governing authority in Libya, the council is obliged to cooperate with the ICC, but it is not required to hand over Saif al-Islam for trial. Libya’s new government has the right under the Rome Statute to prosecute Saif al-Islam and Senussi if it chooses. The ICC was established to “complement” the criminal jurisdiction of national courts, not to replace them; it has jurisdiction only when a country’s domestic courts are unwilling or unable to carry out a prosecution. A Libyan trial of Saif al-Islam and other regime officials may be more likely than an international tribunal in a remote location to facilitate national reconciliation and promote justice for the numerous Libyan victims of Gaddafi’s tyranny. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who met with NTC officials Tuesday in Tripoli, has wisely said that he is prepared to defer to a Libyan trial.

It is somewhat ironic that human rights advocates who called for international intervention to help the Libyan people fight Gaddafi now believe that Libyans cannot be trusted to prosecute Gaddafi officials. In their view, justice is best meted out by international courts.

To the extent that a new Libyan government lacks the capacity to hold fair trials, the international community, human rights groups and the ICC itself should offer technical and financial assistance to build that capacity for these and future prosecutions. Turning Saif al-Islam and Senussi over to the ICC will do nothing to help build a fair and independent judicial system in Libya over the longer term.

Years ago, the United Nations, human rights groups and many European governments rebuffed requests for help from the post-Saddam government in Iraq in conducting the trial of Saddam and his henchmen, ostensibly because of opposition to the death penalty (but more likely out of pique over the unpopular Iraq war). This was a missed opportunity to assist in bringing justice for Saddam’s human rights violations and developing the rule of law in Iraq. The international community should not repeat the same mistake in Libya.

The ICC has an important role to play in dispensing international justice, and the United States should support its work in appropriate cases where national judicial systems are unavailable. But if it is the will of the Libyan people to try Saif al-Islam and other former regime officials, the Obama administration and the international community should support their efforts.

A few hours outside of Cambodia’s capital, 58-year-old Taing Kim, a delicate woman who spent several years as a nun, lives in a gray concrete house in the middle of a quiet village amid a sea of rice paddies. She settled in Kampong Chhnang nearly 30 years ago and makes her living by farming and selling firewood. She was married in 1980 but says her husband left her when he learned of her past.

Taing Kim is one of thousands of victims who have filed to be heard in the trial of three of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, the murderous party in power from 1975 to 1979 that tried to forcibly create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia — and killed some 1.7 million people along the way. Nuon Chea, the No. 2 leader in the Pol Pot regime; Khieu Samphan, the former head of state; and Ieng Sary, who was foreign minister, face charges of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.

When the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia begin opening statements on Monday, it will mark the first time the international community has held senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge to account for the system of torture, starvation, forced marriage and execution they created for people like Taing Kim. The chambers are a hybrid court of Cambodian and international judges, established by a treaty between the Cambodian government and the United Nations. The trial will constitute one of the most significant international legal cases since 1946, when the Nazi high command was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced in less than a year.

These days, the gears of international justice grind more slowly. Great power rivalries and ambivalence have effectively shielded the Khmer Rouge from accountability for three decades. Parties that were ambivalent, or outright hostile, at various junctures include China, the Khmer Rouge’s strongest international patron, and the current government in Phnom Penh, which is led by former Khmer Rouge member Hun Sen. After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, the United States supported the Khmer Rouge diplomatically because of Cold War politics, but in the 1990s, after Cambodia held U.N.-sponsored elections, Washington became one of the driving forces behind creation of the tribunal.

Along the way, many key perpetrators have died, including Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who was deposed by Vietnamese forces in 1979. Since the tribunal began its work in 2006, it has had only one trial, that of Commander “Duch,” who headed the detention facility Tuol Sleng, where “confessions” were extracted from thousands before they were sent off to be murdered in the fields outside the city. Duch was convicted last year; his 35-year sentence was shortened to 19 years because of time served and a finding that he was illegally detained by a military court.

The tribunal’s proceedings have been marked by unusual politicking, including charges of corruption, judicial misconduct, government interference and leaks of confidential information. Such maneuverings probably account for the sense of cynicism we found among ordinary Cambodians during a recent trip devoted to talks with survivors, human rights activists, lawyers and others. When we asked Taing Kim about the court, she said she felt “hopeless.” Her story of being raped by Khmer Rouge soldiers while working at a forced labor camp is one of thousands of survivor testimonies that have been collected by the Documentation Center of Cambodia and provided as evidence to the tribunal.

Fueling the suspicion have been the Cambodian government’s efforts to shut down more cases, even though prosecutors have identified other suspects who should be tried. The government, itself accused of considerable human rights abuses, says that additional trials could threaten the stability of a country just recovering from civil war. Representatives of nongovernmental organizations contend that is a smoke screen for a government populated by former Khmer Rouge officials who might face difficult questions if cases proceed. Many fear the octogenarian defendants will die before justice is served or that donor nations will tire of the slow pace and cost of justice (roughly $150 million so far).

The wrangling obscures the larger significance of the tribunal’s work. Finally, we are tantalizingly close to an official reckoning for the slaughter in Cambodia, by sheer numbers one of the worst cases of state-sponsored mass murder since the Holocaust. Victims like Taing Kim should have their day in court, and many young people are only now learning details of the horrors that took place in their country years ago. That improves the chances that such atrocities will be deterred in the future.

Successful trials would also show mass murderers that time will not wash away their culpability. It would be easy for the West to lose interest in the last chapter of a story that mostly took place decades ago in a far-off conflict once described as a “sideshow” to the Vietnam War. But just as there is no statute of limitations on the crimes of the Holocaust, the victims of the “Killing Fields” must see justice, sooner or later.

Gaunt, frightened and with nowhere left to go, a captured Saif Gaddafi confronts the new Libyan government with a dilemma: whether or not to ship him off to The Hague.

In reality, the government’s room for manoeuvre may be more limited than it thinks. In March, when security council resolution 1970 referred the situation in Libya to the prosecutor of the international criminal court, it internationalised the judicial response to Saif’s alleged crimes. In May, the prosecutor reported that Saif was associated with the killings of peaceful demonstrators, the recruitment and mobilisation of mercenaries and militias, and the imprisonment and elimination of opponents. On 27 June, three ICC judges issued an international arrest warrant against him, citing him as a co-perpetrator in crimes against humanity, with his father and Abdullah al-Senussi, the head of military intelligence – now also reportedly captured.

The June decision gave the ICC judges a key role in deciding where and how Saif will be tried. Although Libya is not a party to the ICC statute, it is a UN member, and resolution 1970 explicitly provides that “the Libyan authorities shall co-operate fully with and provide any necessary assistance to the court and the prosecutor”.

The new Libyan government is therefore bound by a legal framework: it cannot lawfully ignore the ICC judges and decide that Saif will be tried under local law. Unlike Iraq, where there was no international indictment of Saddam, the decision on Saif is not an exclusively Libyan affair.

What does this mean in practice? There are basically four options. The first is to send Saif to the ICC for trial in The Hague. Even this decision would not be free from difficulty: who decides, and according to what criteria? A second option is for the ICC and the new Libyan government to reach agreement on an ICC trial in Libya. This is not something the court has done before; it might go some way to satisfy understandable demands in Libya for a local trial, subject to international oversight and justice dispensed by international judges.

There is a third possibility, if Libya’s government really does want to try him in the country under its own law and procedure: under the principle of complementarity, which may give national courts a first bite, the government may have to persuade the ICC judges it truly is able to prosecute him under fair trial conditions for the international crimes for which the international arrest warrant was issued. Libya’s legal system has a terrible record on doing justice – Iraq needed extensive help from the US to create an illusion of fair trial.

A fourth option is for the Libyan courts to try him first for some other alleged crimes that are outside the jurisdiction of the ICC, for example because they occurred before February 2011, when the ICC became a player. This option would clearly be available in relation to Senussi, who has been directly implicated in the mass killings that occurred in 1996 at the notorious Abu Salim prison. Whether there is sufficient evidence against Saif is unclear.

The ICC prosecutor is in Libya this week to discuss the way forward. He will face a government that is still in flux, and under considerable local pressure to see justice is done in Libya. The bloody killing of Muammar Gaddafi, however, raises serious questions about whether that is possible, but it also increased the pressures on the new government to show it can deliver justice in a rule-of-law framework.

Many of those who say the trial should take place in Libya nevertheless recognise that Iraq’s proceedings against Saddam circumvented many of his greatest crimes and came to an expedited conclusion, and wonder whether sham, local justice can ever be avoided in the aftermath of a bloody conflict. Also, the international justice may not offer the swift justice some will want, as the abortive trial of Slobodan Milosevic made clear. Others with a clear interest in what happens next will include those in the west who were, until recently, friends with Saif, wondering whether his extensive contacts will be more or less public in a trial in Libya or The Hague.

The ICC intervention helped transform the outcome in Libya by contributing to the delegitimisation of the Gaddafi regime. Military action followed and was decisive. But the ICC’s role made the crimes an international matter, and in staying the hand of vengeance the Hague judges will have to be involved. The ICC is entitled to the fullest co-operation of the UK, and to hope for support from the US.

La terrorífica jauría de secuestradores, torturadores y asesinos de la Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, cuya siniestra sigla (ESMA) fue motivo de horror en Argentina durante años de crímenes abominables y posteriores décadas de vergonzosa impunidad, acaba de ser, al fin, sentenciada por la justicia argentina. Aquellas fieras desalmadas, conocidas por sus famosos nombres y sobrenombres, como el Tigre (Jorge Acosta), el Ángel de la Muerte (Alfredo Astiz), el muy temido Serpico (Ricardo Miguel Cavallo), además de otra serie de colegas de su mismo cuerpo militar, todos ellos oficiales de la Marina argentina de diversas graduaciones, destinados por aquellos años setenta en aquel indecente centro docente, reciben al fin su merecido castigo.

Recordemos que la ESMA fue el mayor de los centros clandestinos de detención de aquella dictadura, por el que pasaron miles de víctimas secuestradas y hoy desaparecidas, de las cuales unas 3.000 fueron arrojadas al mar por los vuelos de la muerte.

Cierto que Astiz ya fue sentenciado a cadena perpetua por la Cour d’Assises de París hace nada menos que 21 años (1990) por el secuestro y asesinato de las monjas francesas Alice Domon y Léonie Duquet. Pero lo fue en ausencia, y su extradición fue denegada en su momento por un Gobierno argentino muy posterior a la dictadura.

Cierto también que Cavallo fue capturado en México en 2000 y extraditado a España en 2003, todo ello a requerimiento de la Audiencia Nacional, donde el juez Baltasar Garzón instruyó su causa por varios años y donde la fiscalía solicitaba para él una pena, minuciosamente calculada, de 13.000 a 17.000 años de prisión, bajo diversas hipótesis de imputación. Moderada cifra, comparada con la cadena perpetua ahora dictada en su país. En términos cronológicos rigurosos, unos cuantos milenios siempre son menos tiempo que la interminable perpetuidad. Pero, finalmente, Cavallo fue reclamado por Argentina y extraditado para ser juzgado allí, una vez anulada la Ley de Punto Final de 1986 y la de Obediencia Debida de 1987, así como los posteriores indultos de 1989 y 1990.

A su vez, su colega Alfredo Scilingo, también marino de la ESMA (autor confeso del lanzamiento al mar de 30 personas, narcotizadas pero vivas, en dos vuelos de la muerte), de forma sorpresiva y atolondrada se presentó en Madrid al propio juez Garzón. Como consecuencia de ello, y pese a que trató de retractarse de sus detalladas confesiones, permanece aún en la cárcel de Soto del Real, condenado a la también moderada pena de 1.084 años de prisión por nuestro Tribunal Supremo, que elevó a esa cifra la sentencia previa aún más moderada (640 años) que en 2005 le había impuesto por aquellos crímenes la Audiencia Nacional. Poca cosa, comparada con la perpetua que ahora le hubiera correspondido en su propio país.

Recordemos igualmente que el ya fallecido almirante Emilio Massera, miembro de la primera Junta (1976-1980) y responsable máximo de los horrores perpetrados por la Armada, incluida la ESMA, fue condenado a prisión perpetua en 1985, pero el segundo indulto del presidente Menem lo devolvió a la libertad a finales de 1990.

Sin embargo, es ahora, precisamente ahora, ya sin indultos, sin autoamnistías, sin obediencias debidas ni puntos finales, cuando llega por fin la madre de todas las condenas, la culminación de innumerables esfuerzos en pro de la justicia, la auténtica hora de la desnuda verdad. Es ahora cuando la Justicia argentina (Tribunal Oral Federal Nº 5) se pronuncia con un fallo contundente sobre las responsabilidades individualizadas de cada uno de los miembros del nutrido grupo de marinos militares, jefes y oficiales que, año tras año, entre 1976 y 1983 (con máxima acumulación en el periodo 1977-1978) protagonizaron los horrores criminales allí perpetrados.

Una de las claves de la calaña moral de los condenados nos la proporciona la frase de uno de ellos, El Tigre Acosta, que en pleno juicio calificó al Gobierno de Kirchner de “montonero proterrorista”. En otras palabras, también los Kirchner y sus seguidores debieron ser patrióticamente eliminados y desaparecidos en aquellos años setenta. Según estos fanáticos criminales, esa fuerza democrática, hoy arrolladoramente mayoritaria en aquella sociedad, también debió en su día ser exterminada, formando parte de lo que ellos llamaban “la subversión”.

Finalmente, tras un largo juicio de casi dos años, los jueces Ricardo Farias, Germán Castelli y Daniel Obligado han emitido la sentencia tan largamente esperada, y públicamente leída para conocimiento general: prisión perpetua para los reos Jorge Acosta, Alfredo Astiz, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, Julio César Coronel, Adolfo Miguel Donda, Alberto Eduardo González, Óscar Antonio Montes, Antonio Pernías, Jorge Carlos Rádice, Néstor Omar Savio, Raúl Enrique Scheller y Ernesto Frimón Weber, como responsables de delitos de privación ilegítima de la libertad, tormentos y homicidio. Igualmente, resultan condenados a 25 años de prisión Juan Carlos Fotea Dineri y Manuel Jacinto García Tallada, a 20 años Carlos Antonio Capdevilla, y a 18 años Juan Antonio Azic.

Siempre habrá quien afirme que estos juicios y condenas tan tardías no tienen sentido ni efectividad real. Craso error. Su efecto aleccionador es insustituible, su legitimidad es absoluta y su justificación, total.

El arrepentimiento nacional vuelve a estar en las noticias, como lo ha estado con una frecuencia considerable en los últimos años. En 2008, el entonces primer ministro de Australia Kevin Rudd pidió disculpas a los aborígenes de su país, mientras que la reina Isabel II ofreció un gesto conmovedor de contrición en Irlanda hace unos meses. Y ahora el presidente francés, Nicolas Sarkozy, en una visita reciente al Cáucaso, reiteró su consejo a los turcos de “arrepentirse” por las masacres de armenios cometidas en 1915 por el régimen otomano en decadencia.

Por supuesto, Sarkozy se sorprendería si le dijeran que la misma lógica debería conducir a una declaración de arrepentimiento por parte del estado francés hacia Argelia, para no mencionar a los soldados argelinos que combatieron bajo el estandarte francés, los llamados “harkis”, muchos de los cuales quedaron librados a un destino terrible cuando Francia abandonó el país a las apuradas. En cuanto a aquellos que lograron sobrevivir y cruzar el Mediterráneo, Francia se encargó de sumergirlos en guetos segregados y marginados.

Para muchos líderes y analistas políticos, el arrepentimiento es una forma inapropiada y excesiva de sensibilidad. La historia es dura, dicen. Además, ¿dónde es que uno empieza, o más bien termina de pedir disculpas? ¿Deberíamos pedir disculpas por las Cruzadas, por la destrucción de ciudades alemanas por parte de los ejércitos del rey Luis XIV en el siglo XVII, para no mencionar a los ejércitos de Napoleón? ¿El resultado no sería simplemente transformar a la historia en un ciclo perpetuo de arrepentimiento?

Sin embargo, en una era globalizada, que exige transparencia y propone interdependencia, el arrepentimiento puede considerarse un instrumento de buena gobernancia. Un país que levantó la alfombra del mito y la indiferencia bajo la cual se ocultaron los aspectos negativos de su pasado está mejor preparado para gobernarse a sí mismo y complacer a otros.

Japón nunca aprendió a interactuar con sus vecinos asiáticos de la misma manera que Alemania después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial aprendió a cooperar con sus futuros socios europeos, en parte porque sus disculpas parecieron una formalidad poco entusiasta, si es que alguna vez existieron. La Unión Europea existe (más allá de sus actuales dificultades) porque Alemania pidió perdón. Y Alemania hoy puede distanciarse -aunque claramente de manera tangencial- del actual gobierno de Israel porque los alemanes confrontaron plenamente su pasado como muchos de sus vecinos no lo hicieron.

Pedir perdón nos permite hablarle al “otro” sin ambigüedad, con la libertad de expresión necesaria para expresar la verdad. De hecho, el ex presidente francés Jacques Chirac se ganó un lugar en la historia francesa al proclamar la responsabilidad de Francia en los crímenes cometidos por el gobierno colaboracionista de Vichy contra sus ciudadanos judíos durante la ocupación nazi. La ficción, popularizada por el general Charles de Gaulle y reivindicada por François Mitterrand, de que “Vichy no era Francia” finalmente había quedado sepultada.

¿Quién será el presidente francés lo suficientemente valiente como para pedir perdón por Argelia y los harkis? Por supuesto, los crímenes franceses durante la guerra de independencia de Argelia no se asemejan a los de la Alemania nazi ni en escala ni en motivación. Se podría decir que durante la era colonial, Francia deseó la felicidad de los argelinos, no sólo la grandeza de Francia. Pero fueron los franceses los que definieron “felicidad”, sin consultar con los argelinos, muchos menos pidiendo su consentimiento.

Hoy, mientras Francia se involucra con las fuerzas progresistas de la “primavera árabe” -políticamente, si no militarmente, como en Libia-, ¿puede seguir manteniendo una postura hipócrita frente a Argelia, pagando un precio alto en materia de credibilidad por perpetuar su silencio sobre el pasado? En términos de perdón, es la parte más fuerte la que debe pedir disculpas primero. Y la democracia es un componente esencial de esa fuerza, ya que constituye el terreno más favorable para una pedagogía responsable de honestidad histórica.

Por supuesto, no deberíamos albergar demasiadas ilusiones. El gobierno argelino actual se siente muy cómodo denunciando a Francia, y podría seguir haciéndolo más allá de cualquier cosa que la ex potencia colonial haga o diga.

Pero eso no debería servir como una coartada para no hacer nada. En julio de 2012, Francia y Argelia conmemorarán el 50 aniversario del nacimiento de la República de Argelia. Al producirse inmediatamente después de la próxima elección presidencial francesa, el acontecimiento ofrece una oportunidad única para que Sarkozy o su sucesor lleven a cabo un acto simbólico de arrepentimiento. Un gesto así fortalecería a Francia tanto externamente como en términos de los sentimientos de sus ciudadanos de descendencia argelina, cuya dificultad para reconciliar su identidad dual ha llevado a algunos a convertirse al Islam fundamentalista.

El arrepentimiento no es una señal de debilidad. Por el contrario, es una manifestación de fortaleza serena y concienzuda -y un requisito previo para una buena gobernancia realista.

Dick Cheney tiene miedo de que lo vayan a pinochetear.

No es invento mío, ni la noticia ni tampoco el vocablo tan extraño, aun más peregrino en inglés que en castellano. Al que se le ocurrió retorcer el nombre del exdictador chileno para convertirlo en verbo soez, fue nada menos que el coronel Lawrence Wilkerson, quien ejerciera de jefe de gabinete de Colin Powell, y utilizó esa palabra para sugerir que Cheney teme que, como Pinochet, lo pueden someter a un juicio en el extranjero por crímenes contra la humanidad.

En efecto, desde que Pinochet fue detenido en Londres en 1988, pasando el siguiente año y medio luchando contra su extradición a España para ser juzgado como responsable de torturas durante su régimen, desde que la Cámara de los Lores determinó que era válido procesar a un jefe de Estado por violaciones de derechos humanos en un país diferente de aquel donde los abusos habían sido cometidos, el espectro de esa decisión y aquel destino ha rondado a gobernantes y exmandatarios del mundo entero.

Lo que aterroriza al vicepresidente de Bush (y debería aterrorizar al mismo Bush también) es que cierta mañana, al encontrarse sorbiendo un café au lait en París o paseándose por el Támesis o examinando el Guernica de Picasso en el Museo Reina Sofía de Madrid (¿reconocerá la devastación de Irak en aquel cuadro?), de pronto, sienta que alguien le toca el hombro y lo invite a que lo acompañe a la estación de policía más cercana. En forma muy amable, por cierto, puesto que no lo van a golpear ni menos enviarlo secretamente a experimentar las delicias de un sótano, digamos, en Corea del Norte. Jamás a nadie se le ocurriría someterlo a la tortura del agua (waterboarding) en Guantánamo para forzarlo a confesar, nadie le susurrará en la oreja, “si no tienes nada que esconder, nada tienes que temer”. Y cuando, como corresponde, le hayan tomado las huellas digitales, habrán de llevar a Cheney ante un magistrado para que sea informado de que, de acuerdo a la ley internacional, se le imputa haber propiciado actos de tortura, una actividad condenada por un Convenio Internacional que los Estados Unidos ratificó en 1994. Y después tendrá la oportunidad -que no obtuvieron sus presuntas víctimas- de defenderse con abogados, amén de poder examinar y refutar a sus acusadores.

Es cierto que el exvicepresidente puede evitar tan desagradables experiencias quedándose dentro de las fronteras de su propio país, sin aventurarse al extranjero, salvo tal vez una visita turística a Bahréin o a Yemen, naciones que no han ratificado los tratados que sancionan la tortura. Lo que Cheney no podrá evitar, sin embargo, es la vergüenza y deshonra universal de ser contaminado por la palabra Pinochet.

Una infamia que, desafortunadamente, también infecta al país donde Cheney nació y que ahora le da refugio y le ofrece impunidad.

Al rechazar toda investigación, y menos todavía el procesamiento, de miembros del Gobierno de Bush inculpados de crímenes contra la humanidad, los Estados Unidos le está diciendo al mundo que no obedece los pactos que ha firmado ni tampoco sus propias leyes domésticas. Está declarando que alguno de sus ciudadanos, los más influyentes entre ellos, están más allá del alcance de la ley. Y se une a un grupo de naciones delincuentes que en forma rutinaria torturan y humillan a sus prisioneros, negándoles el habeas corpus.

Es difícil exagerar cuánto daña esto a la patria de Lincoln, cuánto le desprestigia convertirse en un país que tira por la ventana miles de años de progreso en la lucha por definir lo que significa ser humano, lo que significa tener derechos por la mera circunstancia de ser humano. Un país que desprecia la Magna Carta y destruye el legado establecido por los forjadores de la Independencia norteamericana, y que además viola la Carta de las Naciones Unidas que Estados Unidos mismo ayudó a forjar después de la II Guerra Mundial cuando el clamor “nunca más” se oyó en todo el planeta malherido. Un país que aplaude el juicio a Mubarak en Egipto y deplora las cámaras de tortura de Libia y se aflige por las masacres en Siria, pero que no está dispuesto a pedirle cuentas a su propia élite.

Claro que hay una manera de contrarrestar este estigma y, de paso, determinar si Cheney, al proclamar su propia inocencia (como lo hizo Pinochet), se fundamenta en la realidad o en la mentira.

Que juzguen a Dick Cheney en su propio país. Que un jurado decida si, como él mismo ha declarado, hubiera sido inmoral “no hacer todo lo que fuera necesario” (es decir, torturar) “con tal de proteger la nación contra más ataques como los que se llevaron a cabo el 11 de septiembre del 2001″. Examinar en forma pública si aquellas “interrogaciones intensificadas” (enhanced interrogations) fueron, en efecto, imprescindibles para la seguridad de los norteamericanos o si, por el contrario, han terminado por amenazar la paz del país al degradar su prestancia ética, creando más fanáticos de la yihad dispuestos a nuevos asaltos terroristas.

Justice for all. Justicia para todos.

Las tres últimas palabras del juramento a la bandera que los escolares de la patria de Roosevelt y Obama recitan cada mañana, sus manos sobre el corazón, las palabras que repetí yo de niño en Nueva York y que me ardió como una antorcha interior a lo largo de múltiples exilios.

No dice: justicia para una persona. No dice: justicia para algunos. No dice: justicia para casi todos.

Para todos.

Esta frase tan simple expresa que no importa cuán poderoso puedas ser, si eres un tirano como Pinochet o alguien como Cheney que podría, de haberle ocurrido algo a Bush, ser presidente de los Estados Unidos, nunca jamás es posible colocarse por encima de la ley.

Todos.

Una palabra que es sinónimo de humanidad, toda ella, el primero y el último de nosotros, el que manda a millones y la víctima que aúlla en la oscuridad rogando para que el dolor cese.

Si Dick Cheney amara de veras a su país, exigiría que se convocara un Grand Jury -un grupo eminente de conciudadanos- para estimar si procede juzgarlo, desearía un mundo donde los escolares del futuro, sus propios nietos y biznietos, puedan de veras jurar que tiene que haber justica para todos.

¿O acaso no quiere que su nombre quede limpio y nunca más ni remotamente se asocie al de Pinochet, traidor y ladrón y falsario, un hombre que torturó a su propio pueblo y que solo vive y perdura en los anales infinitos de la ignominia?

Hace por lo menos tres décadas que no leía un Premio Goncourt. En los años sesenta, cuando trabajaba en la Radio Televisión Francesa, lo hacía de manera obligatoria, pues debíamos dedicarle el programa La literatura en debate, en el que, con Jorge Edwards, Carlos Semprún y Jean Supervielle pasábamos revista semanal a la actualidad literaria francesa. O mi memoria es injusta, o aquellos premios eran bastante flojos, pues no recuerdo uno solo de los siete que en aquellos años comenté.

Pero estoy seguro, en cambio, que este Goncourt que acabo de leer, HHhH, de Laurent Binet -tiene 39 años, es profesor y esta es su primera novela- lo recordaré con nitidez lo que me queda de vida. No diría que es una gran obra de ficción, pero sí que es un magnífico libro. Su misterioso título son las siglas de una frase que, al parecer, se decía en Alemania en tiempos de Hitler: “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich” (El cerebro de Himmler se llama Heydrich).

La recreación histórica de la vida y la época del jefe de la Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich, de la creación y funciones de las SS, así como de la preparación y ejecución del atentado de la resistencia checoslovaca que puso fin a la vida del Carnicero de Praga (se le apodaba también La Bestia Rubia) es inmejorable. Se advierte que hay detrás de ella una investigación exhaustiva y un rigor extremo que lleva al autor a prevenir al lector cada vez que se siente tentado -y no puede resistir la tentación- de exagerar o colorear algún hecho, de rellenar algún vacío con fantasías o alterar alguna circunstancia para dar mayor eficacia al relato. Esta es la parte más novelesca del libro, los comentarios en los que el narrador se detiene para referir cómo nació su fascinación por el personaje, los estados emocionales que experimenta a lo largo de los años que le toma el trabajo, las pequeñas anécdotas que vivió mientras se documentaba y escribía. Todo esto está contado con gracia y elegancia, pero es, a fin de cuentas, adjetivo comparado con la formidable reconstrucción de las atroces hazañas perpetradas por Heydrich, que fue, en efecto, el brazo derecho de Himmler y uno de los jerarcas nazis más estimados por el propio Führer.

Carnicero, Bestia y otros apodos igual de feroces no bastan, sin embargo, para describir a cabalidad la vertiginosa crueldad de esa encarnación del mal en que se convirtió Reinhard Heydrich a medida que escalaba posiciones en las fuerzas de choque del nazismo, hasta llegar a ser nombrado por Hitler el Protector de las provincias anexadas al Reich de Bohemia y Moravia. Era hijo de un pasable compositor y recibió una buena educación, en un colegio de niños bien donde sus compañeros lo atormentaban acusándolo de ser judío, acusación que estropeó luego su carrera en la Marina de Guerra. Tal vez su precoz incorporación a las SS, cuando este cuerpo de élite del nazismo estaba apenas constituyéndose, fue la manera que utilizó para poner fin a esa sospecha que ponía en duda su pureza aria y que hubiera podido arruinar su futuro político. Fue gracias a su talento organizador y su absoluta falta de escrúpulos que las SS pasaron a ser la maquinaria más efectiva para la implantación del régimen nazi en toda la sociedad alemana, la fuerza de choque que destrozaba los comercios judíos, asesinaba disidentes y críticos, sembraba el terror en sindicatos independientes o fuerzas políticas insumisas, y, comenzada la guerra, la punta de lanza de la estrategia de sujeción y exterminación de las razas inferiores.

En la célebre conferencia de Wannsee, del 20 de enero de 1942, fue Heydrich, secundado por Eichmann, quien presentó, con lujo de detalles, el proyecto de Solución Final, es decir, de industrializar el genocidio judío -la liquidación de 11 millones de personas- utilizando técnicas modernas como las cámaras de gas, en vez de continuar con la liquidación a balazos y por pequeños grupos, lo que, según explicó, extenuaba física y psicológicamente a sus Einsatzgruppen. Cuentan que cuando Himmler asistió por primera vez a las operaciones de exterminio masivo de hombres, mujeres y niños, la impresión fue tan grande que se desmayó. Heydrich estaba vacunado contra esas debilidades: él asistía a los asesinatos colectivos con papel y lápiz a la mano, tomando nota de aquello que podía ser perfeccionado en número de víctimas, rapidez en la matanza o en la pulverización de los restos. Era frío, elegante, buen marido y buen padre, ávido de honores y de bienes materiales, y, a los pocos meses de asumir su protectorado, se jactaba de haber limpiado Checoslovaquia de saboteadores y resistentes y de haber empezado ya la germanización acelerada de checos y eslovacos. Hitler, feliz, lo llamaba a Berlín con frecuencia para coloquios privados.

En estos precisos momentos, el Gobierno checo en el exilio de Londres, presidido por Benes, decide montar la Operación Antropoide, para ajusticiar al Carnicero de Praga, a fin de levantar la moral de la diezmada resistencia interna y mostrar al mundo que Checoslovaquia no se ha rendido del todo al ocupante. Entre todos los voluntarios que se ofrecen, se elige a dos muchachos humildes, provincianos y sencillos, el eslovaco Jozef Gabcík y el checo Jan Kubiš. Ambos son adiestrados en la campiña inglesa por los jefes militares del exilio y lanzados en paracaídas. Durante varios meses, malvivirán en escondrijos transeúntes, ayudados por los pequeños grupos de resistentes, mientras hacen las averiguaciones que les permitan montar un atentado exitoso en el que, tanto Gabcík como Kubiš lo saben, tienen muy pocas posibilidades de salir con vida.

Las páginas que Binet dedica a narrar el atentado, lo que ocurre después, la cacería enloquecida de los autores por una jauría que asesina, tortura y deporta a miles de inocentes, son de una gran maestría literaria. El lenguaje limpio, transparente, que evita toda truculencia, que parece desaparecer detrás de lo que narra, ejerce una impresión hipnótica sobre el lector, quien se siente trasladado en el espacio y en el tiempo al lugar de los hechos narrados, deslizado literalmente en la intimidad incandescente de los dos jóvenes que esperan la llegada del coche descapotable de su víctima, los imprevistos de último minuto que alteran sus planes, el revólver que se encasquilla, la bomba que hace saltar solo parte del coche, la persecución por el chófer. Todos los pormenores tienen tanta fuerza persuasiva que quedan grabados de manera indeleble en la memoria del lector.

Parece mentira que, luego de este cráter, el libro de Laurent Binet sea capaz todavía de hacer vivir una nueva experiencia convulsiva a sus lectores, con el relato de los días que siguen al atentado que acabó con la vida de Heydrich. Hay algo de tragedia griega y de espléndido thriller en esas páginas en que un grupo de checos patriotas se multiplica para esconder a los ajusticiadores, sabiendo muy bien que por esa acción deberán morir también ellos, hasta el epónimo final en que, vendidos por un Judas llamado Karel Curda, Gabcík, Kubiš y cinco compañeros de la resistencia se enfrentan a balazos a 800 SS durante cinco horas, en la cripta de una iglesia, antes de suicidarse para no caer prisioneros.

La muerte de Heydrich desencadenó represalias indescriptibles, como el exterminio de toda la población de Lídice, y torturas y matanzas de centenares de familias eslovacas y checas. Pero, también, mostró al mundo lo que, todavía en 1942, muchos se negaban a admitir: la verdadera naturaleza sanguinaria y la inhumanidad esencial del nazismo. En Checoslovaquia misma, pese al horror que se vivió en las semanas y meses siguientes a la Operación Antropoide, la muerte de Heydrich mantuvo viva la convicción de que, pese a todo su poderío, el Tercer Reich no era invencible.

Un buen libro, como este, perdura en la conciencia, y es un gusanito que no nos da sosiego con esas preguntas inquietantes: ¿cómo fue posible que existiera una inmundicia humana de la catadura de un Reinhard Heydrich? ¿Cómo fue posible el régimen en que individuos como él podían prosperar, alcanzar las más altas posiciones, convertirse en amos absolutos de millones de personas? ¿Qué debemos hacer para que una ignominia semejante no vuelva a repetirse?

The Palestinian bid for statehood and traffic congestion weren’t the only things going on in New York last week as the 66th U.N. General Assembly convened. One of the issues privately discussed by foreign ministers at the United Nations was the “responsibility to protect,” or R2P. This concept was central to the U.N. mandate to protect civilians in Libya, which led to NATO’s aerial involvement there. As the dust settles in Tripoli, it has become necessary to refute a powerful myth that has developed among some pundits and politicians. That myth is that R2P bestows “the right to intervene” in Libya.

Even though R2P features in just two paragraphs of the 40-page “outcome document” of the 2005 U.N. World Summit, historian Martin Gilbert has suggested that it constituted “the most significant adjustment to national sovereignty in 360 years.”

R2P’s core idea is that all governments have an obligation to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It is primarily a preventive doctrine. However, R2P also acknowledges that we live in an imperfect world and if a state is “manifestly failing” to meet its responsibilities, the international community is obligated to act. It is not a right to intervene but a responsibility to protect.

The distinction is not diplomatic artifice. After the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the international community resolved to never again be a passive spectator to mass murder. Still, it would not have been surprising if R2P had quietly expired after 2005. The United Nations, after all, can be a place where “good ideas go to die.” Instead, within the U.N. the debate now is about how R2P should be meaningfully implemented, rather than whether such a responsibility exists.

Enter Moammar Kadafi and the gruesome violence he unleashed on his own people in February. Threatening “no mercy or pity” for the “cockroaches” who had risen against him, and with the rebel city of Benghazi encircled, the U.N. response — Security Council Resolution 1970 — was unprecedented. Not because it referred Kadafi’s regime to the International Criminal Court and imposed sanctions but because of its unanimous endorsement (15 votes to 0) of “the responsibility to protect” as its motivation for doing so.

In the face of continuing killings, Resolution 1973, passed weeks later, authorized “all necessary measures” and established a no-fly zone. The rest is history.

However, as the bombs fell, R2P became entangled with the regime-change agenda of some of those enforcing the U.N.’s mandate. It is, therefore, time to remind ourselves of two essential facts.

The first is that NATO’s action was clearly the lesser of two evils. If Benghazi had fallen to Kadafi, there is every indication that widespread, indiscriminate and deadly violence against civilians would have resulted. Former British statesman Paddy Ashdown’s recent comment that we should measure our success by “the horrors we prevent, rather than the elegance of the outcome,” is relevant in this regard.

Second, before February Libya wasn’t on anyone’s watch list for mass atrocity crimes. Kadafi’s regime was a renowned abuser of human rights, but it had not previously demonstrated an inclination to bomb its own cities or indiscriminately massacre people. The commission of mass atrocities was, like the Arab Spring that provoked it, sudden and unexpected.

The challenge after Libya is how to improve our capacity to respond to future R2P risk situations. Those of us whose business is preventing mass atrocity crimes need to get better at monitoring countries, states and conflicts before they reach “boiling point.” When things do reach a critical stage, we need to ring alarm bells in a way that not only provides adequate warning but mobilizes meaningful responses.

We need to coordinate these responses locally, regionally and internationally. We need better policy instruments, learning not only from Libya and Ivory Coast but also Guinea, Kenya and other places where R2P has been invoked but military force was unnecessary. The standard Security Council menu — which ranges from envoys and mediation, to referral to the ICC, sanctions or a no-fly zone — is inadequate. We need a wider range of preventive, mediated and coercive options.

The situation in Libya moved so rapidly that it was too late for preventive responses. When a regime is already wantonly killing its own people, the options for policymakers are narrow, but that doesn’t mean alternatives don’t exist.

The bottom line is we don’t need to choose between prevention or intervention, or between sovereignty and universalism. We need timely, proportional, multidimensional reactions to all R2P risk situations. We need a U.N. Security Council dedicated to nuance. Hesitation and inaction remain a recipe for complicity with evil.

Finally, we can’t be distracted by the obfuscation of those who think that Kadafi should have been left to his own devices. Or those who argue that Libya is the sole benchmark by which to measure R2P. R2P is not regime change with mood lighting. Each crisis is unique. But a warning to President Bashar Assad of Syria: We are watching and learning.

Time is running out for former government officials accused of murder, genocide and crimes against humanity. In the past few months, the final Serbian war-crimes fugitives were extradited to The Hague, the trial of the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, began in Cairo, and the International Criminal Court opened hearings on the post-election violence that plagued Kenya in 2007-8.

These events have provoked a chorus of trial skeptics, who contend that the threat of prosecution undermines democracy, exacerbates conflict and could lead to greater human rights violations.

Critics argue that the threat of prosecution leads dictators like Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan to entrench themselves in power rather than negotiate a transition to democracy. In El Salvador, where domestic courts have refused to extradite officers accused of murdering Jesuit priests 22 years ago, critics claim that such a prosecution would undermine stability and sovereignty.

But we do not know whether extraditions would destabilize El Salvador, or whether Sudan and Libya would have been better off than they are today if the I.C.C. had not indicted Mr. Bashir or Colonel Qaddafi.

Indeed, those arguments rest on proving or disproving a counterfactual. While the I.C.C. indictment may have prompted Colonel Qaddafi’s desire to hide once he left power, we do not know whether it shortened his last days in power or prolonged them.

Historical and statistical evidence gives us reason to question criticisms of human rights trials. My research shows that transitional countries — those moving from authoritarian governments to democracy or from civil war to peace — where human rights prosecutions have taken place subsequently become less repressive than transitional countries without prosecutions, holding other factors constant.

By comparing countries like Argentina and Chile that have used human rights prosecutions with those like Brazil that have not, I found that prosecutions tended not to exacerbate human rights violations, undermine democracy or lead to violence.

Of 100 countries that underwent a transition from 1980 to 2004 (the period for which extensive data is available), 48 pursued at least one human rights prosecution, and 33 of those pursued two or more. Countries that have prosecuted former officials exhibit lower levels of torture, summary execution, forced disappearances and political imprisonment. Although civil war heightens repression, prosecutions in the context of civil war do not make the situation worse, as critics claim.

Such evidence doesn’t tell us what will happen in any individual country, but it is a better basis from which to reason than a counterfactual guess. The possibility of punishment and disgrace makes violating human rights more costly, and thus deters future leaders from doing so.

From the final Nuremberg trials in 1949 until the 1970s, there was virtually no chance that heads of state and government officials would be held accountable for human rights violations. But in the last two decades, the likelihood of punishment has increased, and newly installed officials may be more cautious before deciding to murder or torture their political opponents.

In addition, trials seem to project deterrence across borders. If a number of countries in a region pursue prosecutions, nearby countries also show a decrease in the level of repression, even if they have not held trials.

In Latin America, young military officers need only look to Argentina and Chile, where 81 and 66 individuals, respectively, have been convicted for crimes during previous dictatorships, to absorb the lesson that the possibility of punishment is much greater than it was in the past. This may help explain why military coups are now so rare in the region.

Likewise, the sight of Mr. Mubarak in a cage in a Cairo courtroom could deter government officials elsewhere in the region who are considering repressive measures against their populations. This may not help much with Mr. Bashir or President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who are already deeply complicit in violent repression, and are unlikely to be deterred. But the history of dictators shows that some leaders cling to power at any cost, so it is hard to argue that the threat of prosecution is uniquely responsible for their continuing iron grip.

This does not mean that all governments must immediately and simultaneously begin far-reaching prosecutions. The desire for justice is persistent, and if political conditions for prosecutions are not ripe immediately after a democratic transition, such prosecutions can be held later.

Cambodia issued its first war-crimes conviction last year, over 30 years after the horrors of the killing fields. And domestic courts in Uruguay took 20 years to sentence the former authoritarian leader Juan María Bordaberry for human rights violations. Mr. Bordaberry died this summer in his home, where he was serving a 30-year sentence for ordering the murder of political opponents.

It has never been easy for any country to confront its past. Almost all leaders, when faced with calls for accountability, have wanted to turn the page and look toward the future. But demands for justice are robust, and countries that have held former leaders accountable have in most cases come away stronger.

El juicio a Ratko Mladic, responsable junto a Radovan Karadzic de la masacre de Srebrenica, nos recuerda la tragedia que el pueblo bosnio vivió hace 16 años. Quien quiera revivirla puede leer el testimonio que dejó uno de sus escasos supervivientes, Emir Suljagic, en su impresionante libro Postales desde la tumba.

El nombre de Srebrenica despierta en mí dos asociaciones contradictorias: la sensación de horror y la imagen de la belleza. Sí, belleza, porque el nombre de esa pequeña ciudad bosnia evoca un torrente o una fuente de plata, o tal vez un pozo argentado. Algo parecido me ocurre con Kosovo, el más reciente campo de batalla en nuestro continente. Es la forma abreviada de Kosovo Polje -el nombre de una región geográfica en aquellas latitudes-, “campo de mirlos”. Y con ese último horror europeo -las sangrientas guerras de la ex-Yugoslavia- va asociado otro hermoso topónimo: la bombardeada ciudad de Belgrado, en serbio Beograd, cuyo significado es “ciudad blanca” o “castillo blanco”.

Rememorando los lugares donde tuvieron lugar los trágicos acontecimientos del siglo XX, caigo en la cuenta de que muchos topónimos forman un agudo contraste con esos siniestros acontecimientos. Pienso en Babi Yar, ese barranco en las afueras de Kiev, donde entre el 29 y 30 de septiembre de 1941 los nazis ejecutaron a unos 150.000 comunistas, gitanos, judíos, y ucranianos, además de presos de guerra soviéticos, tirándolos al barranco tras un tiro en la nuca. Yar significa barranco y babi, en ruso, o babin, en ucraniano, se refiere a baba, una tabernera que, en tiempos remotos, hechizaba a los viajeros en su establecimiento, en aquel entonces en pleno campo. De modo que ese topónimo, que para cualquier ucraniano es sinónimo del horror, tiene al mismo tiempo resonancias legendarias y amorosas y se puede traducir como El Barranco de la Bella Tabernera.

De las matanzas en Ucrania las asociaciones me llevan a Stalin y sus campos de trabajos forzados. Un gran archipiélago gulag se sitúa cerca de la población, no muy alejada del círculo polar, de Arjánguelsk, la ciudad del arcángel, o el lugar donde apareció el arcángel. En uno de esos campos, Intá, fue presa la soprano española Lina Prokofiev, esposa del compositor. Otro campo, Pijtovka, adonde enviaron a la hermana de la poeta rusa Marina Tsvetáieva, Anastasia, evoca un bosque de abetos.

También los campos de concentración nazi estaban ubicados cerca de pueblos con hermosos nombres. Auschwitz, en polaco Oswiecim, es un magnífico pueblo medieval del siglo XII; su nombre polaco, Oswiecim-Brzezinka, en alemán Auschwitz-Birkenau, significa “bosquecillo de abedules”. Un pueblo vecino de Oswiecim o Auschwitz se llama Rajsko, “El Paraíso”. La raíz del nombre Majdanek -apellido del terrateniente- es “pequeño lugar de encuentro social”; Jaworzno significa “bosque de arces”. Esos últimos dos campos de exterminio nazi fueron “aprovechados” por la Polonia comunista para encarcelar a los anticomunistas, los prisioneros de guerra alemanes y otros presos políticos, además de los civiles de las minorías alemana y ucraniana.

Los campos nazis en Alemania y Austria llevaban unos nombres no menos entrañables. Así, Ravensbrück, donde murió, entre muchos otros, la amiga de Kafka, Milena Jesenská, significa “puente de los Raven”, o (si la b ha mutado en v), “puente de los cuervos”. Los españoles que habían luchado en el bando republicano en la Guerra Civil también acabaron en campos con bellos nombres. El mayor número de ellos, 7.347, fue a parar a Mauthausen, o “casas de peaje”, refiriéndose sin duda al peaje de la frontera; 751 españoles estuvieron recluidos en Dachau o “tejados en un pantanal”; otros fueron enviados a Sachsenhausen o “casas sajonas”; y 638 españoles, entre ellos el recién fallecido escritor y exministro de Cultura Jorge Semprún, fueron presos en Buchenwald, cuyo nombre significa “bosque de hayas”.

Los lugares, pues, no son nada por sí mismos: son aquello en que los convierten las acciones del hombre. Sea porque los describimos con un nombre hermoso, sea porque en ellos unos seres humanos ejecutan a otros, los lugares nos dicen aquello que les hacemos decir. Ningún lugar, como ningún pueblo ni individuo, está predeterminado en la historia. Serán las acciones que en ellos ocurran las que los llenarán de memoria hasta que el olvido u otro acto venidero les otorguen un nuevo significado, más abominable o más bello.

Y es que la relación entre las palabras y las cosas, sean lugares, sean conceptos -raza, nación, dios-, no es inmutable sino que se transforma con el uso que cada época hace de ellos. Los nombres que aquí hemos apuntado nos recuerdan hoy el horror del que ha sido capaz en las últimas décadas el ser humano, casi siempre en nombre de un bien supremo. Recordar para comprender, sin sacralizar ni banalizar el pasado. Para eso deberían servir los bellos nombres del horror.

Libya’s rebel leaders say they want to try Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, if and when he is captured, in Libyan courts. In principle, Libyans deserve the satisfaction that only domestic justice can bring. National trials would advance the rule of law and allow Libyans to fully own their political transition.

One problem: the International Criminal Court, based 1,400 miles away in The Hague, has already issued arrest warrants for Colonel Qaddafi, his son and second-in-command Seif al-Islam, and his intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi. The United Nations Security Council, recognizing that Colonel Qaddafi’s alleged crimes were not just against Libyans but against humanity, asked the I.C.C. in February to investigate the situation in Libya. Now the I.C.C. legitimately wants to try the three for atrocities committed since the uprising in Libya began last winter.

Some argue that the new Libyan government would be legally bound to transfer Colonel Qaddafi and his associates to The Hague. Others argue that the I.C.C. must defer to Libyan authorities if they are willing and able to try Colonel Qaddafi fairly in their own courts. A better option should satisfy both I.C.C. partisans and the new leaders of Libya: allow the I.C.C. to try those indicted, but to do it in Libya.

As important as national trials are, post-Qaddafi Libya would, at least in the short term, lack the infrastructure necessary for such complex prosecutions. As in Iraq soon after Saddam Hussein was ousted, the willingness to adhere to basic due process could be severely tested.

The I.C.C., however, has the experience, expertise and legal infrastructure to try mass crimes. It has put significant investigative muscle into documenting crimes committed since mid-February. A fair trial process could start fairly soon.

Where the trials should be held is another question.

Trial in The Hague would face limitations. I.C.C. proceedings normally take place far from the scene of the crime, in a foreign language, often according to rules and procedures that may be impenetrable to victim communities. And the court has had difficulty educating local communities elsewhere in Africa about its work, a problem that didn’t occur for the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh, which are hybrid courts that have elements of international and national law and personnel.

An I.C.C. trial in Tripoli would have practical and symbolic benefits. Most important, it would be closer to the communities that most need to see justice done. It could involve more Libyans in the proceedings, a step that would afford the I.C.C. greater access to victims and give young Libyan lawyers and other professionals experience with a modern system of justice. It would give the I.C.C.’s staff members an opportunity to engage directly with the society for which they are doing their work, while serving as a platform for the international community to help Libya rebuild the rule of law.

Trial in Tripoli, with significant Libyan participation, could also signal a new direction for Libya, one that favors the rule of law and integration with the institutions of international life. It could foster criminal prosecutions of lower-level perpetrators and truth-and-reconciliation processes at the national level, as well as investigations of any serious crimes committed by rebel forces, a signal that the new government believes in fairness within a unified society.

It could give new Libyan leaders some breathing room as they build their new system, while not precluding them from later trying Colonel Qaddafi themselves for the crimes of the past four decades.

An I.C.C. trial in Tripoli would undoubtedly require substantial resources to build or renovate court facilities. NATO or other forces blessed by the Security Council could help arrange security for defendants in custody. The I.C.C. itself would require strong security, lest it become a target for remnants of the old regime. The Security Council, which was happy to refer Libya for investigation, should help now by authorizing this kind of support and identifying sources of funds and expertise for the trial.

At the same time, not all proceedings need to take place in Libya; pre-trial proceedings could begin in The Hague while preparations for the actual trial move forward in Tripoli.

None of this should seem extraordinary. The Nuremberg trials after World War II drew much of their power from the fact that they took place in the country responsible for the worst crimes of the 20th century. And the I.C.C.’s charter, the Rome Statute, leaves open the possibility of trials outside The Hague.

After decades of oppression and six months of war, Libyans deserve the opportunity to bring their oppressors to justice. The international community should support that kind of effort, and reinforce it by assuring the basic norms of international law. For Libyans, trial by the I.C.C. in Tripoli should be a bridge toward taking ownership of their future.

The fall of a tyrant is usually the cause of popular rejoicing followed by public vengeance. This is the fate the rebels obviously want for Colonel Gaddafi – hence their £1m bounty on his head and offer of a pardon for his killer. But it is just possible, should he be taken alive, that we will enter a new and better era in which tyrants will instead be dispatched to The Hague for fair trial in an international court for their crimes against humanity.

David Cameron has made one serious mistake – parroted repeatedly by the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell – by insisting that the fate of the Gaddafis should be a matter for the Libyan people. This was the line George Bush took after the capture of Saddam Hussein, as a rhetorical cover for his determination that the death penalty be imposed on the Iraqi despot by politically manipulated local judges.

It is too much to expect that Gaddafi can receive justice at the hands of those whom he has repressed for so long, in a corrupt judicial system that he controlled (and so could not be considered “judicial” in any real sense). It must now be reconstructed from scratch, with new judges independent of the National Transitional Council. That gimcrack organisation’s UN spokesman said that it wants to organise Gaddafi’s trial, but it is plainly unable to secure an unbiased legal process when he does fall into its hands. The bounty on his head seems to confirm the NTC’s preference for Gaddafi’s summary execution.

There is a more important reason of principle why the fate of the Gaddafis must not be left to the Libyans. The colonel is charged with crimes against humanity – the mass murder of civilians by perpetrating offences so barbaric that the very fact that a fellow human being can commit them demeans us all. Ordering the massacre of 1,200 captives in a prison compound, blowing 270 people out of the sky over Lockerbie, and almost as many in a UTA passenger jet over Chad a few months later – these are merely the most egregious examples of international crimes committed by the worst man left in the world. It is essential, therefore, that Gaddafi face real justice in The Hague and not revenge in Benghazi.

Moreover, liberation has come to the Libyans by courtesy of international law and they have a reciprocal duty to abide by it. The UN security council decided, by adopting resolution 1970, to refer the situation there to the international criminal court in The Hague, which in consequence brought down the indictments on Gaddafi, Gaddafi’s son Saif and Abdullah al-Senussi, a relative who heads their intelligence service. By adopting resolution 1973 the security council mandated Nato action in order to protect civilian lives, and nobody pretends that the regime could have been overthrown without that air, sea and logistical support. The rebel leaders have a legal duty to hand any captured indictees over to the ICC, and the UK should insist that they do so.

Perhaps most importantly, the idea of putting tyrants on trial has caught on in the countries that they tyrannise. The slogans in the Syrian streets this week say “Assad to The Hague”. There is an expectation of justice that has arisen in the Arab spring, and Cameron must not disappoint it.

“Gaddafi to The Hague” will send a chilling signal to all other governments tempted to kill their own people. There is no decent or lawful alternative, and leaders of Nato countries must make that very clear to the National Transitional Council.

En la sala del Tribunal de Alto Riesgo de la ciudad de Guatemala, bajo la presidencia de la juez Jazmín Barrios, la voz firme y serena de la juez vocal Patricia Bustamante sonó especialmente rotunda cuando leyó: “Quedó demostrado que los militares actuaron de forma planificada, con ensañamiento y perversidad”.

La sentencia se refiere a los hechos producidos principalmente el 7 de diciembre de 1982, cuando una unidad de kaibiles -tropas especiales- entró en el poblado de Las Dos Erres, pequeña aldea maya del Petén, al norte del país. Un total de 201 campesinos, civiles desarmados, en su mayoría mujeres y niños, fueron allí asesinados. 29 años después, cuatro exkaibiles han sido juzgados por aquellos crímenes y condenados en primera instancia a 6.030 años cada uno de ellos. Según limita la ley, tendrán que cumplir 50. A ellos se añaden otros 30 años por incumplimiento de sus deberes para con la humanidad, sumando 80 años en total.

Los horrores perpetrados por el Ejército de Guatemala contra las comunidades mayas durante largas décadas, pero muy principalmente en el “quinquenio negro” (1978-1983), desbordan toda posible descripción. Las descripciones fidedignas existen, pero nadie podría creerlas si no fuera por su abrumadora evidencia en extensión, detalle y concreción testimonial. Ahí están las 1.500 páginas, en cuatro pavorosos tomos, del informe REMHI (Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica), emitido en 1998 por la ODHAG, Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (24-4-1998). Páginas, a su vez, corroboradas y extensamente ampliadas un año después (25-2-1999) por las aún más brutales 3.800 páginas de los 12 tomos, aún más pavorosos, del informe de la CEH (Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico de la ONU sobre Guatemala, a la que tuvimos el honor de pertenecer). Caso de no existir tan aplastante volumen documental y testimonial, nadie podría creer los hechos en él registrados, dada su inaudita atrocidad.

Salvajismo con las mujeres, incluidas las embarazadas, brutalidad con los niños, incluidos los bebés. Monstruosas mutilaciones masculinas y femeninas, previas a los asesinatos. Empalamientos, personas quemadas vivas, aberrantes formas de asesinar que aseguraban largos días de agonía. Difícil tarea, la de describir lo indescriptible. Pero trabajosamente se hizo, y el fruto documental de ambos informes citados quedó ahí, y ahí sigue para la posteridad.

Según los hechos establecidos, los soldados -unos 40 kaibiles-, al irrumpir en Las Dos Erres, separaron a las mujeres y niños de los hombres. Estos fueron reunidos en la escuela, donde fueron torturados y finalmente asesinados. Las mujeres con los niños fueron encerrados en la pequeña iglesia evangélica de la comunidad. Después, las mujeres fueron obligadas a cocinar y servir la comida a sus verdugos, antes de ser violadas y asesinadas por estos. Las violaciones y asesinatos se cometieron con especial sadismo, y los cadáveres fueron arrojados a un pozo, utilizado como fosa común. Igualmente, los niños fueron también asesinados y arrojados al mismo pozo.

Dos exkaibiles, miembros entonces de aquella unidad militar, hoy retirados, radicados en México y testigos voluntarios de la Fiscalía, aportaron al juicio, por videoconferencia, detalles escalofriantes sobre la actuación de los acusados. Por ejemplo, uno de los criminales ahora condenados, el subinstructor kaibil Manuel Pop Sun, se llevó por la fuerza a una niña hasta ocultarse con ella en una zona de matorrales próxima al poblado, donde la violó. Regresó con ella, la decapitó y la arrojó al pozo. Otros detalles igualmente horribles vinieron a configurar el contenido de la sentencia.

Recordemos un hecho que nos fue relatado personalmente por un exmiembro del Gobierno del presidente democristiano Vinicio Cerezo. En 1986, al ser nombrado ministro, se le asignó como escolta un antiguo kaibil. Al saber que la hija de este sufría una grave dolencia de la vista, abocada a la ceguera salvo que recibiera un tratamiento muy caro y especializado, el ministro, compadecido de aquella desgracia, insoluble en una familia de muy pocos recursos, le consiguió ese tratamiento en Estados Unidos. Cuando se lo comunicó al padre, recibió esta tremenda respuesta: “Agradezco sus desvelos por mi niña, pero sepa que serán totalmente inútiles. Porque lo que le ocurre a mi hija es el castigo que Dios me envía a mí, por las atrocidades que yo cometí con los niños mayas cuando era kaibil”. ¿Qué horrores infanticidas cometería aquel sujeto para experimentar un remordimiento patológico de tal magnitud?

Pero los imputados no son solo militares de baja o nula graduación. En los últimos meses se ha producido el arresto y procesamiento de tres caracterizados mandos ya retirados, pero que ejercieron importantes tareas represivas en la década de los ochenta. Uno de ellos es el general Héctor López Fuentes, exjefe del Estado Mayor del Ejército (1982-1983). Contra él pesan acusaciones de genocidio, crímenes de guerra y contra la humanidad, perpetrados principalmente contra comunidades mayas, crímenes “en los que sus pueblos quedaron destruidos, sus habitantes de todas las edades fueron asesinados, y las mujeres y las niñas fueron sistemáticamente violadas”, precisa Margot Wallstrom, representante especial de la ONU sobre la violencia sexual en los conflictos.

Otro de los jefes recientemente capturados y procesados es el coronel Rafael Bol de la Cruz, exdirector de la Policía Nacional, responsable de la detención ilegal y desaparición en 1984 del que fue dirigente sindical y estudiantil Edgar Fernando García, además de una serie de desapariciones forzadas mientras dirigió aquel viejo y corrupto cuerpo policial.

El tercero de los jefes militares aludidos es el también coronel retirado Marco Antonio Sánchez Samayoa, encarcelado desde 2009 y condenado ya a 53 años de prisión como responsable del secuestro y desaparición definitiva de ocho personas en la aldea de El Jute, en 1981.

Ante esta serie de acciones judiciales, la Asociación de Veteranos Militares de Guatemala (Avemilgua), reducto del más reaccionario sector de aquel Ejército (un Ejército que durante décadas eliminó a destacados defensores de derechos humanos), ha difundido un comunicado en el que, rechazando con indignación estas actuaciones judiciales, lanza la siguiente advertencia literal: “Advertimos estar dispuestos a luchar nuevamente si las circunstancias así lo demandan”. Pero ¿qué significa “luchar nuevamente” para estos militares empeñados en asegurar su propia impunidad y prolongar la de los peores torturadores, asesinos y violadores de mujeres y niñas?

¿Tendremos que presenciar y asumir nuevamente que otros actuales defensores de los derechos humanos vuelvan a ser acribillados en la calle, como lo fueron, entre otros, el diplomático Fuentes Mohr y el exalcalde Colom Argueta, o apuñalados en las aceras, como la antropólo-ga Myrna Mack, o golpeados hasta la desfiguración de sus rostros, como el obispo monseñor Juan Gerardi, asesinado tras la presentación de su informe REMHI arriba citado? ¿Tendremos que presenciar la resurrección de los abominables escuadrones de la muerte, nuevamente dispuestos a secuestrar, torturar y asesinar? ¿Requerirá esa nueva lucha anunciada por Avemilgua la patriótica repetición de este tipo de horrores?

Avemilgua terminaba su amenazador comunicado con este eslogan: “Por el honor y la dignidad”. Pero ¿qué clase de honor puede defenderse mediante esta clase de crímenes? ¿Y qué clase de dignidad se defiende, o se defendió, violando sistemáticamente mujeres y decapitando niñas mayas hace tres décadas?

Última noticia: los expertos del Equipo de Antropología Forense que analizan para la Fiscalía los restos de las víctimas, acaban de ser seguidos y atacados en su vehículo, y amenazados de muerte en un repugnante escrito de términos soeces y tinta roja, cuyo infame contenido nos retrotrae a aquellos años de plomo que algunos patriotas añoran y amenazan con repetir.

At a recent press conference in London, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, provided some well-meaning but flawed counsel regarding the fate of Muammar el-Qaddafi: The Libyan president should relinquish power and retire with possible impunity either in Libya or some safe-haven country.

When asked by a journalist if the offer of impunity contravened the International Criminal Court’s indictment for Qaddafi’s arrest, Hague answered, “The British government is very in favor of the powers of the I.C.C. and the requirements of the I.C.C. being complied with. So I think you are trying to take us down a hypothetical route.”

For the international court, there is nothing hypothetical about Qaddafi’s indicted status. A spokeswoman from the office of the court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, observed pointedly that the indictment is a “legal fact,” not an option, with only one possible course of action: “He has to be arrested.”

The public contretemps between London and the I.C.C. is the latest in a series of collisions between the international justice system and state diplomacy.

In 2009, Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, was forced to cancel a visit to London for fear of being arrested on war crimes charges for her involvement in the operations in Gaza. What was both remarkable and disturbing about this was that a U.K. magistrate judge issued the arrest warrant. The British government seemed oblivious to the judge’s actions, stating that there had been no application for a warrant and “no record of any such hearing.” In fact, the identity of the person or group requesting the warrant was not made public; it was a “private prosecution.” Based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, an arrest warrant in Britain can be pursued by a private claimant and issued without prior consent by the attorney general.

That same year, the I.C.C. prosecutor, amid sluggish diplomatic progress to end the atrocities in Darfur, intervened with an indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was the first such I.C.C. action taken against a sitting head of state, and many saw the indictment as having scuttled diplomatic efforts to resolve the Darfur crisis.

In January 2011, when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issued a sealed indictment of suspects in the Rafik Hariri case, it led to the collapse of that country’s coalition government.

Holding political and military leaders accountable for their actions by an international tribunal was, of course, pioneered with the prosecution of Nazi crimes at the end of World War II. Since then, clear legal principles have been embedded in international law, codified in documents and treaties such as the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1948 genocide convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the 1984 torture convention.

These new legal norms were tested in the early 1990s in the ad hoc criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The system was then tentative and fragile, but proved to be effective, especially in the case of the former Yugoslavia, where the International Tribunal for  the Former Yugoslavia secured the arrest of the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, and most recently the architect of the Srebrenica massacre, Ratko Mladic.

Designed as a permanent institution to prosecute the most egregious international crimes, the I.C.C.’s creation was a remarkable development in international law. Since its inception, the court has generated more than two dozen indictments and sowed no small amount of diplomatic discord.

The fault lines in the I.C.C.’s indictment process against Qaddafi are telling. Although 116 nations have ratified the Rome Statute that established the court, including all of South America, most of Europe and half the nations of Africa, large tracts of political and geographic terrain remain outside I.C.C. jurisdiction, notably Russia, China, India and the United States. Yet each of these countries voted for the U.N. Security Council resolution that referred Libya (also not a signatory) to the court. For any of these countries to seek a safe haven for Qaddafi would seriously undermine the principle of international justice.

For his part, Moreno-Ocampo was certainly aware of efforts to move Qaddafi beyond the international court’s reach. It appears that he tried to thwart the diplomatic dodge by issuing a request for Qaddafi’s indictment in record time. The U.N. Security Council referred the Libya situation to the I.C.C. at the end of February. The indictment was out of the gate in four months, creating a legal fait accompli that turned Qaddafi from a beleaguered head of state into an indicted war criminal. The prosecutor was seeking to send a message that accountability should trump impunity. It’s an assertion with precedent.

When Radovan Karadzic went on trial in March 2010, he claimed that Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., had promised immunity in exchange for relinquishing power. Karadzic wanted to know why he was facing criminal prosecution when he should have been protected by a deal.

Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, wanted to know the same thing. Unlike Karadzic, whose claims of promised immunity Holbrooke flatly denied, Taylor negotiated an arrangement that provided comfortable exile in Nigeria — until justice intervened and he went on trial in the Hague.

In these instances, the machinery of justice crushed diplomatic immunity, leaving Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Taylor, and even Bashir open to prosecution. But at what cost?

Diplomats would contend that the promise of immunity has proven to be a powerful tool in resolving political and humanitarian crises. The impunity originally extended to Taylor clearly spared further carnage in Liberia, while the I.C.C. indictment against Bashir exacerbated the human suffering when the Sudanese president in retaliation expelled Western relief organizations.

Unfortunately, contradictions and competing agendas undermine the credibility and effectiveness of prosecutors and diplomats alike.

What good is the deterrent effect of criminal prosecution if a diplomat can hold out the prospect of immunity? What good is a diplomat’s promise of immunity if a court can undo it? How fair or credible is a system of justice that is restricted to a politically determined jurisdiction? If the I.C.C. is to provide uniformity in the exercise of jurisdiction over international crimes then why indict one leader for atrocities while ignoring the excesses of another? And ultimately, how do we weigh the price in suffering between judicial accountability and diplomatic compromise?

Diplomacy is about negotiating interests across borders. Justice is about the application of legal principles within jurisdictions. Diplomacy is based on power relationships and relies on nuance, discretion, perceptions and, most important, negotiation. The best diplomacy is often invisible. In contrast, the best judicial processes are based on facts, principles, rigorous adherence to procedures, and above all, transparency.

Despite these differences and potential incompatibilities, diplomats and judicial authorities need to start looking for points of coordination. As Qaddafi awaits his fate, the time has come for diplomats and jurists to begin exploring common ground for the common good.

Here in the land of Tevye, the roosters still crow. Cows graze in open fields. But Tevye doesn’t live here anymore.

I have set out from Israel to Ukraine to trace my ancestors. My first stop is west of Kiev, in a corner of the czarist-era Pale of Settlement for Jews, where “Fiddler on the Roof” was set. Here sits an old Jewish cemetery, now a plowed-over field. It bears not a single headstone, just a house-like memorial for the late-19th-century maggid, or preacher, Mordechai of Chernobyl, my paternal ancestor five generations back.

I continue on, more than 250 miles, to the outskirts of Khotyn, a 1,000-year-old Bessarabian fortress city beside the Dniester River. I enter another open field to connect with a far darker time. I find a 30-foot-long concrete slab, etched at its head with the names, in Hebrew, of 45 men, women and children. First are my grandfather and uncle: “The holy Rabbi Mordechai Israel Twersky and his son, Aaron.”

Following a Jewish tradition, I remove my shoes. This is sacred ground — one of three mass graves in the city, containing in all an estimated 1,900 Jews who perished early in the Holocaust, 70 years ago this summer.

“The earth shifted for days,” an old, toothless man tells me in Russian. He is one of Khotyn’s 15 remaining Jews and among the minyan, or quorum for worship, who accompany me. “They couldn’t bury them fast enough.”

I had never fully understood what happened here in 1941. Growing up in New York, I heard stories from my father, who survived five labor camps before making it to Ellis Island and becoming a rabbi. Not one to subject his three children to horrors, he focused on how his father had lived. On this visit, I wanted also to learn how my grandfather had died.

In the quiet streets of this city, where a Jewish community of 15,000 once thrived, I find no living witnesses. But I carry vivid testimonies written and spoken by Khotyn’s survivors, a guidebook from another era.

The history is complicated; it begins with the Soviet occupation in 1940 of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which the Nazi-Soviet pact allowed Stalin to detach from Romania. The Romanian Army’s withdrawal, and its return a year later with the invading Germans and their mobile S.S. killing units — the notorious Einsatzgruppen — unleashed a systematic Romanian-German campaign of torture, rape and mass murder. Then the Romanians deported some 23,000 Jews from the Khotyn district, which includes the city, to an occupied zone known as Transnistria.

Over a three-week period in July and August of 1941, approximately 50,000 Jews were murdered in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, the historian Avigdor Shachan wrote in “Burning Ice: The Ghettos of Transnistria.” According to the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews died in Transnistria during the war.

They were victims not just of Germany, but at least equally of Romania’s anti-Semitic government. Just days before the dictator Ion Antonescu’s henchmen murdered my grandfather, experts on the Holocaust say, his next in command, Mihai Antonescu, advised top officials about the coming deportation of Jews. The ministers, he said, could be “indifferent if history judges us as barbarians … This is the most opportune moment in our history. If need be, use machine guns.”

On Stefan Cel Mare Street, I gaze at my grandfather’s house. A couple sits outside at a table, drinking beer. What was once a synagogue sanctuary is now a grocery store.

“Your grandfather prayed from that balcony,” says Genya Cherkes, pointing upward and narrating a history her Jewish family bequeathed to her. “On the Sabbath and holidays,” she says, “people gathered below just to hear him pray.”

Ms. Cherkes, now 60, says her grandparents told her they had hidden my grandfather and his family in their orchard (in a non-Jewish neighborhood) after the Russians evicted the Twerskys from their home, leaving them to fear being deported or shot.

I stare at the locals. My thoughts turn to the many collaborators, Romanian and Ukrainian, who assisted the Romanian and German armies in their atrocities. “They entered the homes of Jews with axes in their hands,” Nahum Morgenstern, a survivor, said of the collaborators, in a remembrance on file at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance institution and archive in Jerusalem. “They forced the Jews to undress and took their clothing. Then they decapitated them.”

I am taken to a deserted compound about a mile away. It resembles a warehouse, with large glass windows and a high ceiling. A cow grazes outside. “In 1941 this was a girls’ school,” says one of my guides, a man named Ilya, whose mother survived the war. “Here,” he says of the Romanians and Germans, “they gathered all the city’s Jews, then picked out the Jewish leaders. Your grandfather was one of them.”

I feel that I know this compound. For years, I imagined it as I read testimonies depicting Jews’ being herded into classrooms, gasping for air, debating whether to rejoin their leaders. “I was pressed up against the second-floor window,” Mr. Shachan himself recalled when I spoke with him. He was 8 at the time.

Here, according to testimony at a war crimes tribunal held in Bucharest in 1945, Jews pleaded for their lives with a Romanian police commander who, in quieter times, had engaged Jews in fluent Yiddish. But he told the assembled Jews that day that he had a new name: “My name is Hitler.”

I open my briefcase. I show Ilya an account from the Yad Vashem archives. A Jew, sensing the end was near, asked Rabbi Twersky to make sense of it all. “It will be good,” the rabbi replied, in Yiddish. “One must always have faith.”

We trace the path taken by the doomed Jewish leaders — doctors, lawyers and teachers, but also scribes, butchers and pharmacists — along the Dniester River, where hundreds of Khotyn’s Jews were shot. My grandfather was seen breaking from the line. “He jumped into the river to purify himself,” according to testimony from a survivor, Rachela Katz, cited in “On the Roads of Exile: Memories, 1941-1945” by Solomon Shapira. “The soldiers pulled him out and beat him.”

We arrive at the spot — a foul-smelling marsh — where, in Ms. Katz’s account, the Jews were forced to dig their own grave. There is an eerie quiet. The grass is high and thick. I recite psalms and a prayer for the dead, El Moleh Rachamim (God Full of Compassion). I read from Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

Roosters are crowing now, seemingly louder and louder. To these ears it is a piercing, heckling sound — Tevye’s roosters sounding out an impudent “Taps” for a community where real Tevyes once lived.

A towering poplar engulfs the grave in its soothing, protective shade. “It is a sign,” one Jew tells me in Russian. “Life can still sprout here.”

Time is short. I must travel to Murafa, where my grandmother Batsheva, Rabbi Twersky’s wife, rests. She died there of malnutrition and typhus in a ghetto set up by Romanian authorities in 1942.

Before leaving, I ask Ms. Cherkes, who tends Khotyn’s centuries-old Jewish cemetery and the graves of her forebears, how she can still live in a city where the martyrs so far exceed the remaining Jews.

“You can’t begin to understand,” she says, annoyed by the question but forcing a smile. “You will never understand.”

When the United Nations Security Council unanimously referred the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court prosecutor on Feb. 26, it made clear that impunity for crimes against humanity threatens international peace and security. The referral sent a strong message that systematic attacks with deadly force against peaceful protesters have criminal consequences.

Now, the governments that took the lead in the 15-to-0 Security Council vote — Britain, France and the United States — seem to be negotiating a deal that, if it goes through, would short-circuit justice by sidelining the court’s proceedings for victims in Libya.

Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said recently that it was important for Muammar el Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, to relinquish all power, but that after that: “What happens to Qaddafi is ultimately a question for the Libyans.” This turnabout is enough to set even the nimblest diplomatic head spinning.

After setting the wheels of justice in motion, all Security Council members — and these three countries in particular — should be reaffirming the message that impunity is no longer an option, instead of proffering a get out of jail free card to end a military stalemate. Amnesty for mass atrocities, whether explicit or de facto, has no legal validity internationally.

Fortunately, we have moved past the point where governments can offer immunity to people implicated in serious international crimes. Indeed, the Security Council’s unanimous referral of the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court reflects its choice to hold international criminals accountable, including senior officials.

On June 27, three judges at the I.C.C. issued arrest warrants for Qaddafi, his son Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, and Libya’s intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi. They are wanted on charges of crimes against humanity for their roles in attacks on civilians, including peaceful demonstrators, in Tripoli, Benghazi, Misurata, and other Libyan cities and towns.

These warrants were an important step toward providing justice for the victims of the serious crimes in Libya.

Now that there is an independent international judicial process in place the process should be allowed to play out. Moreover, the I.C.C. prosecutor should apply the law impartially and investigate alleged crimes by the Libyan rebels as well as any committed by NATO forces. It is simply too late to turn back the clock.

An offer of amnesty to an accused sitting head of state can make the situation a lot worse by sending a signal that there will be no cost for slaughtering as many people as possible in the effort to cling to power. If more brutality works, the leader is home free. If it doesn’t keep him in power, there’s no penalty for having tried. This is an awful message to abusive leaders around the world — if they hang on long enough, tiring out the opposition forces, all will be forgiven.

While Qaddafi cannot be granted a formal amnesty for serious crimes committed in Libya, diplomats may be thinking of using a possible escape hatch contained in the I.C.C.’s treaty. Under Article 16 of the I.C.C. Statute, the Security Council may, citing the needs of international peace and security, defer the proceedings against Qaddafi for 12 months. This truly unfortunate provision authorizes political interference in a judicial proceeding, and it should be used only in exceptional circumstances.

Since a suspension under Article 16 is limited to a renewable 12-month duration, if the Security Council granted a deferral there would be enormous pressure to renew it after a year and then again at the expiration of each succeeding year. This would spawn the ugly optic of Security Council members voting each year for continued immunity for Qaddafi.

Of course, a deferral of an I.C.C. investigation also risks setting a dangerous precedent for accused senior officials from other countries. By effectively bartering away accountability for the most serious crimes under international law, the Council would be encouraging all those alleged to be responsible for major atrocities to negotiate, as Qaddafi is now attempting to do, to void the rule of law. Indeed, a deferral for Qaddafi may lead other accused war criminals such as President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan to renew his claim to suspend the I.C.C. warrant against him for crimes committed in Darfur.

In addition to renouncing judicial principle and creating a troubling precedent, a plan that gives Qaddafi a comfortable retirement (inside or outside of Libya) is short-sighted. Qaddafi, who holds no official government post and exercises enormous power through his presence, would remain a destabilizing figure, and the Libyan people would probably not feel free from fear and intimidation. Moreover, effectively amnestying the top leaders would also make it difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute anyone else in the regime for crimes committed there over 40 years of Qaddafi’s rule.

In the short-term, it is easy to understand the temptation to forego justice in an effort to end an armed conflict. But instead of putting a conflict to rest, a de-facto amnesty that grants immunity for crimes against humanity may just spur another cycle of grave abuses while failing to bring peace.

The prosecution of Ratko Mladic, who appears on Monday in The Hague, only serves to underline the organised naivete of the international community, and the infantile understanding of justice of one of its key instruments, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Verdicts thus far handed down by the ICTY undoubtedly represent a contribution to the growth of the moral community. But, apart from the catharsis it has afforded victims, the court has failed to reach its goal regarding a renewal of interethnic trust in the post-Yugoslavian Balkans.

Denial that crimes took place at all, especially that genocide occurred in Srebrenica, still pervades much local discourse. Public protests after Mladic’s apprehension only corroborated the sense that verdicts against the architects and strategic executors of criminal enterprises have not resulted in catharsis among those on whose behalf these crimes were ostensibly committed.

The Serbian intellectual Professor Nenad Dimitrijevic is the author of an extraordinary new book, Duty to Respond: Mass Crime, Denial, and Collective Responsibility. In it he describes the nature of collective crime, noting that crimes of the recent past – committed against non-Serbs by some Serbs in the name of all Serbs – were collective. But a collective crime, according to Dimitrijevic, is more than just an aggregate of individual acts, and justice for such crimes must address more than just concrete acts committed by perpetrators, their co-conspirators and bystanders.

This is the crux of it. The moral consequences of the crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina are such that, on an ethical and cultural level, they require accountability on the part of the community in whose name they were committed, along with verdicts against those who committed them in the name of that group. However, to a great extent this has not happened.

A culture of denial is still the leading paradigm of Serbian social cohesion; on the social value meter, he who deceives is far ahead of she who exposes the truth. It is this reality that leads me to believe that the premise of the ICTY – to try key actors of the immediate post-Yugoslavian demiurge, but to individualise their responsibility – is in essence correct, but, in the context of its practical consequences, wrong. Its outcomes, after all, are not in line with its premise. To try leading political and military commanders as individuals, without relevant consequences for the regimes and projects they have created, organised and headed constitutes an injustice for victims as well as for those individuals. By individualising responsibility, the effect on history of these “gods of war” has been underestimated. They have not killed anybody by their own hand, so their verdicts lose purpose if they are not strongly tied to their social projects.

As things stand, the tribunal would be much more efficient if it were conceived as a court with a never-ending mandate, because its main purpose would be to try thousands of petty criminals, who would finally not be able to avoid justice. It is possible that at protests of support for Mladic in Republika Srpska (where there was a noticeable absence of Milorad Dodik’s ruling structures) and Serbia (where the government understandably distanced itself, as it had in fact sent Mladic to The Hague), demonstrators included people who committed war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Were these people tried and sentenced, they would not have the opportunity to transfer stories of mythical war heroism from generation to generation – and it is these stories, built around a concept of history, that influence a culture of denial.

Unfortunately, separating Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and others from their projects, reducing them to the status of mere criminals, has boosted the proliferation of history that is uninhabited by the truth. The truth, however, shines – as Umberto Eco notes – with its own clarity. It could not be any clearer that support for Mladic and his apotheosis in the media are an unfortunate endorsement of Dimitrijevic’s assessment that survivors of the atrocities of the 1992-1995 war have no reason to think that Serbian culture has abandoned the ideology that ignited aggressions. In other words, “no reason at all to believe we have become better people”.

With General Radko Mladić now in the dock in The Hague to face charges stemming from the atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bosnian War, the contrast with events in Southern Sudan could not be more appalling. Sudan’s government, led by President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, has taken a page from its Darfur playbook by waging war once again on civilians and their property, this time attacking the disputed border region of Abyei on the eve of South Sudan’s legal secession next month.

This is the same Bashir who is currently charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court. And it is the same set of Sudanese officials who received plaudits from diplomats for the agreement that purported to end Sudan’s two-decade North-South civil war, and for publicly committing to abide by the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the territorial dispute in Abyei.

In Abyei, Bashir’s regime planned and conducted a pogrom that can be characterized only as a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing intended to rid the city of ethnic Ngok Dinka and replace them with members of the northern-aligned Misseriya ethnic group. Eyewitnesses report that whole villages were razed, civilians shelled indiscriminately, and children left dead by the roadside (with some reportedly eaten by lions when fleeing).

One man called his brother in Abyei and heard a man answer the phone and tell him, “We killed your brother.” Between 60,000 and 150,000 refugees fled for their lives, leaving behind their meager possessions. They are the lucky ones. Bashir’s forces destroyed the only bridge linking Abyei to areas of safety, in effect trapping the remaining population and impeding the safe return of those who had fled.

Unlike in previous cases of attacks on civilians by Bashir’s regime, this time we don’t need to wait for fragmentary reports from the ground to piece together what happened. We have satellite imagery that shows what happened almost in real time. The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), initiated by George Clooney and the Enough Project, has provided irrefutable and nearly immediate evidence of this new wave of crimes committed against the civilian population in and around Abyei.

The DigitalGlobe satellite images of destruction are horrifyingly similar to what we have seen too many times in the past in Sudan. No government or international organization can plausibly plead ignorance or misinformation in the face of the photographic evidence available online and in the SSP report prepared by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. The imagery in the report shows the presence of at least ten Sudan Armed Forces battle tanks, mobile artillery pieces, and infantry fighting vehicles in Abyei. Analysis of the images also reveals that up to one-third of civilian structures in Abyei have been burned, and corroborates reports that tens of thousands of civilians have been misplaced.

There is no conceivable basis under the laws and customs of war for the deliberate razing of civilian homes and the theft or destruction of supplies provided by the generosity of other governments to help the population meet its urgent needs. And there is no scope for arguing that the allegations are based on fragmented reports or were simply fabricated; in Abyei, the facts are so clear that there can be no pretext for inaction.

The United Nations Security Council should now exercise its Chapter VII authority to mandate an independent team of international experts that can assess the evidence of crimes committed in Abyei and preserve the testimony of witnesses before the Sudanese Government can silence them. If Bashir, who has been indicted by the ICC for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Darfur, is indeed responsible for the assault on Abyei, that fact alone should compel all states to agree to expand the tribunal’s ongoing investigation to encompass crimes committed in Abyei. Moreover, the northerners who “settled” in Abyei following the assault should be seen as complicit in the regime’s crimes rather than as peaceful civilians building a community.

Today, governments everywhere should apply the basic rule that we all learned in grade school: aggression against innocents cannot be rewarded. The war criminals who sit in the government in Khartoum have now lost all remaining pretense to moral authority. Indeed, the Bashir-led military’s behavior should create a worldwide outcry that forces the government to return illegally obtained personal property and to compensate its victims properly.

In the end, Abyei’s citizens enjoy the fundamental human right to determine freely their own destiny, even in the face of regime troops and tanks that continue to occupy Abyei. The people of Abyei have the right to choose to rebuild their shattered community under the newly independent Government of South Sudan, rather than being forced by diplomatic indecision to remain under the boot of Bashir’s army.

The arrest of Ratko Mladic on May 26 caught me off guard. I couldn’t believe it. I clenched my fists, trying to grip him tightly in my hands. Finally, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But then I heard the speech by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic. For him, Mr. Mladic’s arrest represents the closing of a dark chapter in our history and a removal of the mark of shame that has stained the Serbian people for two decades. But there was no mention of the many other perpetrators of genocide during the 1990s or of the responsibility the Serbian state bears for those crimes. Once again, it seems, we might lose the chance to open a painful but necessary debate about the past.

Not long ago, for a brief moment, it seemed that all of Serbia would side with “foreign” victims against its “own” perpetrators. That was in 2005, after my colleagues and I uncovered and released a 1995 video showing the execution of six Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. For the first time, the Serbian public saw incontrovertible evidence of the state’s involvement in massacring 7,000 Muslims there.

The government was quick to respond by dissociating the state from the massacre. Overnight, the police arrested five men and then declared them a criminal group, denying any connection the unit may have had with state institutions. At the trial, the Serbian court rejected the testimonies of the mothers and children of the six executed Muslims. There was no evidence, the court concluded, that the men were detainees from Srebrenica. That ruling was a mark of shame on all of us. And we can’t wash it off by sending Mr. Mladic to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Mr. Mladic’s arrest brought relief to the families of victims. It offered the Hague tribunal recognition that it is a successful agent of international justice. And it granted Serbia the long-coveted prospect of membership in the European Union. The Serbian government has managed to persuade the world that it values a European future more highly than the criminal heroes of the past.

But I am not so sure that Serbia has given up on Mr. Mladic and his fellow generals, who prosecuted a genocidal war in Bosnia. The sympathy that state officials and the news media expressed for Mr. Mladic last week is yet another mark of shame on all of us. The deputy prosecutor offered him strawberries. His wish to be visited by the health minister and the president of Parliament was granted, as was his request to visit his daughter’s grave. The Serbian public was constantly updated on his diet in jail, and we all learned that Mr. Mladic flew to The Hague in the suit he’d worn at his son’s wedding. He was treated as a star.

Such adulation of murderers is dangerous in a region where the wounds of war have not yet healed. Nationalism is still strong in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro, and sometimes even stronger than it was during the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s.

Recently in Croatia, politicians, the press, the church and civil society groups protested the Hague tribunal’s verdict that two Croatian generals were guilty of war crimes, a ruling that challenged Croatia’s official interpretation of the war. They all acknowledge that some killings took place in 1995, but they deny that the state and former leaders like Franjo Tudjman, then the president of Croatia, were responsible for planning the ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

In the eyes of the Bosnian political establishment and victims’ families, justice for the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing will be served only if Serbia and Bosnian Serb leaders acknowledge their role in the genocide. Yet Bosnian Serb leaders still deny it took place and demand that more Bosnian Muslim leaders face war crimes trials, too.

Similarly, little has changed in Kosovo, where the public opposes trying the commanders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army. And in Montenegro, a court ruled that the policemen who handed over Muslim refugees to Bosnian Serb forces in May 1992 weren’t guilty of a war crime — a slap in the face to victims’ families.

The region desperately needs an honest debate about the past. It is the only way to recognize all victims and to stop the lies we tell about ourselves and about others. Victims’ families, 1,600 nongovernmental organizations, veterans and clergymen have signed on to the initiative for the founding of a regional commission that would compile a complete registry of victims, including dead soldiers, policemen, volunteers and those who were targets of ethnic cleansing.

Later this month, a request to establish this commission will be submitted to leaders of all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. If adopted, it will put an end to the age-old Balkan practice of leaving victims nameless. And we can only hope that it will eventually wash away the stain of the past once and for all.

Por fin le han capturado. En los últimos tiempos no abundan las buenas noticias en Europa, pero el hecho de que Ratko Mladic esté en una celda de un tribunal internacional en La Haya es motivo de celebración sin reservas. El hombre directamente responsable de la matanza de cerca de 8.000 hombres y niños en Srebrenica va a tener que responder por esa y otras atrocidades. Es otro paso adelante en uno de los grandes avances de nuestro tiempo: el movimiento mundial para garantizar la exigencia de responsabilidades.

Hace poco más de 60 años, el poeta polaco Czeslaw Milosz escribió unos versos dirigidos a los torturadores y asesinos en masa de uno de los periodos más sangrientos de la historia europea. “Vosotros, que habéis hecho daño a una persona corriente”, advertía, “… no os sintáis a salvo”.

Por aquel entonces, eso era prácticamente lo único que debía temer un asesino de masas: que el poeta recordase. Un instante de muy imperfecta exigencia de responsabilidades a escala internacional después de 1945, simbolizado en los juicios a los líderes nazis en Núremberg y los tratados fundacionales del derecho humanitario internacional, se esfumó detrás de los telones de acero y las convenientes amnesias de la guerra fría. Se ocultaron o falsearon hasta los datos más fundamentales de numerosas atrocidades cometidas. Muchos monstruos murieron en la cama, con sus medallas aún prendidas en el uniforme dentro del armario. Solo el poeta recordaba; el poeta y la persona corriente, si es que seguía con vida.

Pero esos ideales de 1945 nunca murieron del todo. A partir de los años setenta se desarrollaron muchas formas de pedir responsabilidades, de Latinoamérica a Suráfrica y del sureste asiático al sureste de Europa: comisiones de la verdad, investigaciones judiciales, la apertura de archivos, la prohibición de que personas implicadas ocupen cargos públicos (lustración o depuración), juicios nacionales e internacionales.

Todos ellos tienen su papel, pero un tribunal internacional es el mejor método que se ha descubierto para ocuparse de los seres más repugnantes de todos: aquellos sobre los que pesan acusaciones verosímiles de crímenes contra la humanidad. En los tribunales nacionales, suele haber aplicaciones retorcidas de las normas legales y la firme sospecha de intereses políticos partidistas. ¿De verdad la mejor forma de abordar la responsabilidad política de Mubarak por las acciones de su régimen es que un tribunal egipcio le multe con 34 millones de dólares por haber cerrado Internet? Eso es lo que opina el Ejército egipcio, pero al tiempo, así desvía la atención de su propia culpabilidad en el régimen anterior.

A los tribunales internacionales, como el Tribunal Especial para la antigua Yugoslavia, que re-tiene ahora a Mladic, y el Tribunal Penal Internacional (ICC) también es posible hacerles muchas objeciones. Aparte de la lentitud del proceso judicial, que hizo que el exdirigente serbio Slobodan Milosevic muriera sin que se le hubiera condenado en La Haya, la mayoría de esos reparos puede reducirse a la acusación de aplicar un doble rasero.

¿Por qué, gritan muchos serbios, solo detenéis a serbios, y no a croatas ni bosnios? Pero esta es una acusación falsa. Además de Milosevic, Mladic y Radovan Karadzic, el tribunal ha condenado al general croata Ante Gotovina y está volviendo a juzgar a Ramush Haradinaj, un líder guerrillero albanokosovar.

¿Por qué, dicen otros, os ocupáis solo de los peces gordos y dejáis escapar a los pequeños? Es cierto, pero inevitable. Es imposible juzgar a las decenas de miles de personas que han sido responsables, en distintos grados, de los horrores de cualquier dictadura. ¿Sería mejor lo contrario, atrapar a los peces pequeños y dejar escapar a los grandes? Esa fue la mayor crítica que se le hizo al proceso de desnazifi-cación a finales de los años cuarenta. Si solo podemos ocuparnos de unos cuantos peces, hay que ir a por los gordos.

También se pregunta: “¿Por qué juzgáis a X pero no a Y?”. ¿Por qué Milosevic y el liberiano Charles Taylor, pero no Than Shwe de Birmania ni Bashar el Assad de Siria? Para esta objeción hay varias respuestas. Una es que el hecho de no poder capturar a todos los asesinos no quiere decir que no haya que capturar a ninguno. Otra es que sí, quizá el ICC debería juzgar también a Y. Y una tercera es que distintas respuestas no siempre significan que haya dobles raseros.

Si un dirigente rebasa el límite (un límite que exige unos requisitos muy extremos) que le califica para que le acusen de crímenes contra la humanidad, entonces tiene que ser siempre posible que un tribunal internacional le procese en cualquier momento y en cualquier lugar. En cambio, si sus delitos pasados no cumplen esos requisitos tan estrictos, existe margen para que haya acuerdos locales. Si el líder en cuestión consintió salir de la dictadura mediante una negociación pacífica, habrá que tener en cuenta esa buena conducta. Por ejemplo, es un grave error que el dirigente de la época de la ley marcial polaca Wojciech Jaruzelski, que no fue culpable de crímenes contra la humanidad e intentó reparar los daños causados contribuyendo a la transición a la democracia en 1989, esté todavía sometido a juicio por los delitos cometidos con anterioridad.

La decisión más difícil habría que tomarla si un líder como el libio Muamar el Gadafi, que ha aterrorizado a su pueblo y desde luego merece ser procesado, desempeñara un papel como el de Jaruzelski en una transición negociada. Pero no existen indicios de ello. ¿De verdad va a discutir alguien que lo único que impide a Gadafi abdicar como un auténtico hombre de Estado es la reciente orden de detención dictada contra él por el ICC?

En el mundo, la acusación de emplear dobles raseros suele dirigirse sobre todo contra Occidente y, en especial, contra Estados Unidos. Desde los dictadores latinoamericanos hasta los gobernantes actuales de Arabia Saudí, los tiranos amigos de Washington salen siempre bien librados -dice este reproche tan popular-, mientras que sus enemigos pueden acabar asesinados. Durante los últimos 60 años, ha habido demasiados casos concretos de ese tipo de doble rasero “realista” llevado al extremo. Sin embargo, y lo subrayo, no creo que la muerte de Osama bin Laden pertenezca a esa lista.

En un mundo ideal, Bin Laden estaría hoy sentado en una celda de La Haya, en el mismo corredor que Mladic, Gotovina, Gadafi y muchos más. ¿Pero alguien cree que habríamos podido fiarnos de que los servicios de seguridad paquistaníes fueran a llevar a Bin Laden ante un tribunal internacional? Que se lo digan al valiente periodista paquistaní que acaba de pagar con su vida las informaciones que elaboró sobre las relaciones entre esos mismos servicios de seguridad y Al Qaeda. En una operación nocturna extremadamente peligrosa, en territorio hostil, sin idea de lo que Bin Laden podía tener preparado, era imposible esperar que un seal estadounidense se detuviera a leer al despiadado asesino de masas sus derechos con arreglo a los convenios de Naciones Unidas. Pero ese fue, y debe seguir siendo, un caso muy excepcional.

En términos generales, para que las leyes internacionales tengan alguna posibilidad de disuadir a los monstruos en el futuro, necesitamos que EE UU las respalden en la práctica, y no solo en la teoría. Eso significa aplicárselas también a sí mismos, no solo a los demás. Por el momento, EE UU ni siquiera es miembro del ICC.

He hablado de un “movimiento hacia la exigencia de responsabilidades”, pero ese movimiento no es irreversible. A medida que los asuntos mundiales estén cada vez más en manos de potencias no occidentales que asuman una defensa airada de su soberanía, es muy probable que la tendencia se invierta. Si queremos que lo que le ha sucedido esta semana a Mladic, un hecho profundamente satisfactorio, se convierta en norma internacional, y no sea una excepción europea efímera, EE UU debe apoyar con todo su peso a las instituciones capaces de hacerlo posible. Para celebrar la detención de Mladic, EE UU debe incorporarse al Tribunal Penal Internacional.

At last they’ve got him. That Ratko Mladic is now sitting in the detention cell of an international tribunal in The Hague is a cause for unqualified celebration. The man directly responsible for the massacre of some 8,000 unarmed men and boys at Srebrenica will be held to account for that and other atrocities. This is another step forward in one of the great developments of our time: the global movement toward accountability.

Just over 60 years ago, Czeslaw Milosz wrote a poem addressed to the torturers and mass murderers. “You who harmed an ordinary person,” he warned, “do not feel safe… The poet remembers.”

Back then, that was about all most mass murderers had to be frightened of: the poet remembering. A post-1945 moment of very imperfect international accountability, symbolized by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders and the founding treaties of international humanitarian law, had faded. Even the most basic facts about many atrocities were systematically concealed or falsified. Monsters died at home in their beds.

But those post-1945 ideals never quite died. From the 1970s onward, many different forms of accountability were developed: truth commissions, judicial investigations, the opening of archives, the banning of compromised people from holding public office (“lustration”), domestic and international trials.

All have their proper place, but an international court is the best way yet discovered to deal with the vilest of the vile: those credibly accused of crimes against humanity. National courts cannot escape legal contortions and the strong suspicion of a partisan political agenda. Is an Egyptian court fining former President Hosni Mubarak $34 million for shutting down the Internet really the right way to address his political responsibility for the previous regime? The Egyptian military obviously thinks so, but then this deflects attention from its culpability under Mubarak.

International courts, such as the special tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which holds Mladic, and the International Criminal Court, are also open to multiple objections. Apart from the slowness of the judicial process, most of these objections come down to the charge of double standards.

Why, cry many Serbs, do you arraign only Serbs, not Croats and Bosnians? That accusation is simply false. Besides charging Slobodan Milosevic, Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the tribunal has convicted the Croat general Ante Gotovina and is currently retrying Ramush Haradinaj, a Kosovo Albanian guerilla leader.

Why, say others, do you fry the big fish and let the little ones swim free? That is true, but inevitable. You cannot try all the tens of thousands responsible, in different degrees, for the horrors of any dictatorship. Would it be better the other way round: catch the small, let the big go free? That was the more damning charge against de-Nazification in the late 1940s.

Then there’s the question: Why indict Dictator X but not Dictator Y? Why Milosevic and the Liberian Charles Taylor but not Than Shwe of Burma or Bashar Assad of Syria? Here’s one answer: If you can’t catch all murderers, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t catch any. And another: Maybe the ICC should be prosecuting Y too. And a third: Different responses don’t always mean double standards.

When leaders overstep the very extreme mark that qualifies them for a charge of crimes against humanity, they should everywhere and always be liable to prosecution in an international court. If, however, their misdeeds fall short of that standard, there is room for different arrangements inside their own country. For example, it is quite wrong that the Polish martial-law leader Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was not guilty of crimes against humanity and tried to make amends by helping Poland’s transition to democracy in 1989, should still — as a very old man — be on trial for those earlier misdeeds.

The most difficult choice would come if a leader such as Libya’s Moammar Kadafi , who has terrorized his people and surely merits prosecution, were then to play a Jaruzelski-type role in a negotiated transition. But there is no sign of that.

In the rest of the world, the charge of double standards is mainly directed against the West, and especially the United States. From Latin American dictators to the current rulers of Saudi Arabia — so runs a popular indictment — Washington’s tyrannical friends get away with murder while its foes are liable to be executed, like Osama bin Laden. Over the last 60 years, there have been too many individual instances of extreme “realist” double standards. However, the killing of Bin Laden definitely doesn’t belong on that list.

Yes, in some ideal world, Bin Laden would now be sitting in a cell in The Hague. But does anyone seriously believe that the Pakistani security services could have been relied on to deliver Bin Laden to an international court? Tell that to the brave Pakistani journalist who has just paid with his life for reporting the entanglement of those very security services with Al Qaeda. In a dangerous nighttime operation, in hostile territory, with no idea what Bin Laden had under his belt, a Navy SEAL could not be expected to stop and read that ruthless mass murderer his rights under U.N. conventions. But that was, and should remain, an exceptional case.

If international law is to have any chance of deterring the monsters of tomorrow, then we need the United States to support it practically and not just rhetorically. At the moment, the U.S. is not even a member of the ICC.

There is nothing irreversible about the movement toward accountability. As the affairs of the world are increasingly driven by non-Western powers that pique themselves on the defense of their own sovereignty, the trend is quite likely to be reversed.

If the profoundly satisfying thing that happened this week to Ratko Mladic is to have any chance of becoming an international norm rather than a transient European exception, then the U.S. must throw its weight behind the kinds of institution that will make this possible. To celebrate the arrest of Mladic, the United States should join the International Criminal Court.

Ratko Mladic es un hombre fácil de odiar. En su mejor momento, no sólo hablaba y se comportaba como un matón, sino también lo parecía: el tipo de psicópata de cuello robusto, ojos claros y malas maneras que gustosamente te extirparía las uñas solo por diversión. Además de muchas otras crueldades, el Carnicero de Bosnia fue el responsable, en el verano de 1995, de la muerte de unos 8.000 hombres y niños bosnios musulmanes desarmados en los bosques cercanos a Srebrenica.

Por todo eso, su detención en la localidad serbia de Lazarevo genera en la mayoría de nosotros tenemos un sentimiento de cálida satisfacción. Serbia ha ganado respeto internacional por este hecho, lo que debería acelerar su ingreso a la Unión Europea. Las antiguas víctimas de las fuerzas serbo-bosnias de Mladic  sentirán que al fin se hace un poco de justicia.

Sin embargo, el próximo juicio a Ratko Mladic da pie a algunas preguntas incómodas. ¿Por qué, en primer lugar, no puede ser sometido a juicio en Belgrado, en lugar de La Haya? ¿Y es realmente inteligente acusarlo de genocidio, además de crímenes contra la humanidad y crímenes de guerra?

Ambas preguntas revelan lo mucho que aún vivimos a la sombra del Tribunal de Nuremberg, donde los líderes nazis fueron juzgados por un panel judicial internacional. Se creía, tal vez con razón, que los alemanes serían incapaces de juzgar a sus propios ex gobernantes. Y los crímenes nazis habían sido tan terribles en escala e intención que hubo que crear nuevas leyes -”crímenes contra la humanidad”- para juzgar a los que habían tenido la responsabilidad formal de los mismos. Los Estados también deben rendir cuentas de sus actos, y por eso se creó 1948 la Convención para la Prevención y la Sanción del Delito de Genocidio.

El Holocausto no fue el principal tema de los juicios de Nuremberg. Sin embargo, los aliados pensaban que el proyecto nazi de exterminio de todo un pueblo hacía necesario un enfoque jurídico totalmente nuevo, para asegurar que tal atrocidad nunca volviera a suceder.

El problema con el genocidio, como concepto jurídico, es que es vago. Se refiere a “actos perpetrados con la intención de destruir total o parcialmente a un grupo nacional, étnico, racial o religioso”. Se hace hincapié en la “intención”, no en el número de personas cuyas vidas son destruidas. Mao Zedong asesinó hasta 40 millones de chinos, pero ¿tenía la intención de destruirlos como grupo? Por supuesto que no. Sabemos que Hitler tenía la intención de destruir a todos los judíos, hasta el último hombre, mujer y niño. A pesar de que los asesinatos en masa no son raros en la historia, el plan de exterminio de Hitler era, si no único, ciertamente muy inusual.

Sin embargo, el loable esfuerzo para evitar que tal cosa vuelva a ocurrir ha tenido consecuencias lamentables. Porque, en nuestro afán por aprender las lecciones de la historia, a menudo aprendemos las equivocadas, o falseamos la historia con fines dudosos.

En cierto modo, en la matanza de Srebrenica también influyeron los recuerdos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El batallón holandés de las Naciones Unidas se comprometió a proteger a los musulmanes, a pesar de no estar en condiciones de hacerlo. Fue una promesa que en parte refleja el sentimiento de culpa que aún persigue a los holandeses por mirar hacia otro lado mientras los alemanes detenían y deportaban hacia los campos de exterminio a dos tercios de la población judía de su país. Esta vez, sería diferente. Esta vez, actuarían. Lamentablemente, superados en número y en armas por las fuerzas de Mladic, los holandeses tuvieron que librar Srebrenica a su suerte.

Debido al trauma de la intención de Hitler de asesinar a todos los judíos, el genocidio se ha convertido en una razón de peso para la acción militar, incluida la invasión armada de otros países. Pero ¿qué constituye un genocidio? Bernard Kouchner, fundador de Médicos sin Fronteras, quería que la comunidad internacional interviniese en Nigeria en 1970, porque vio la eliminación de los ibos por las tropas nigerianas como un eco del genocidio de Auschwitz. Otros vieron una brutal guerra civil y advirtieron que una intervención no haría más que empeorar las cosas.

Para algunos, seguimos viviendo en 1938, o más bien en 1942, cuando los nazis aprobaron lo que Hitler llamó “la solución final del problema judío”. El presidente George W. Bush y sus adeptos, invocando el Acuerdo de Munich en cada oportunidad, consideraron los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001 como una llamada a las armas. Saddam Hussein era Hitler, así que tuvimos que enviar las tropas. Debemos detener el genocidio sudanés que Omar al-Bashir perpetra en Darfur. Tenemos que impedir que el coronel Muammar el-Gaddafi cometa asesinatos en masa en Bengasi. Y así sucesivamente.

A veces la intervención puede salvar vidas. Pero a menudo las guerras engendran más guerras o las vuelven más largas. La acción militar puede causar más violencia y más muertes de civiles. Esto es especialmente cierto en el caso de la intervención en guerras civiles, donde no es fácil dividir a los bandos en disputa en víctimas y agresores, buenos y malos.

Por supuesto, el mundo se vuelve mucho más sencillo si optamos por verlo en blanco y negro. Y, sin duda, el juicio a Mladic animará esta percepción. Será juzgado por genocidio, porque el tribunal de la ONU para la antigua Yugoslavia y la Corte Internacional de Justicia decidieron que los serbios de Bosnia fueron genocidas. Puesto que su subordinado, Radislav Krstic, ya fue condenado por su complicidad con el genocidio de Srebrenica, es probable que Mladic también lo sea.

No tenemos que sentir pena por Mladic. No hay duda de que es culpable de graves crímenes de guerra. Y un juicio, con todo lo insuficiente que pueda ser, en la mayoría de los casos es todavía preferible a un asesinato. Sin embargo, juzgarlo por genocidio, a pesar de que será difícil probar que tenía la intención de exterminar a los musulmanes bosnios como grupo solo porque eran musulmanes, enturbiará aún más la ya vaga definición del término.

Mladic se dedicó a llevar a cabo una limpieza étnica que, aunque reprobable, no es lo mismo que un genocidio. Las definiciones imprecisas animarán más intervenciones militares y, por tanto, más guerras. Al invocar el fantasma de Hitler con demasiada frecuencia, trivializamos la enormidad de lo que realmente hizo.

Less than a month after the death of Osama bin Laden, Ratko Mladic, one of the most evil men of the 20th century, has been captured. The moment is sweet. For me, bittersweet. For 16 years, Mladic had been Richard Holbrooke’s nemesis, and my husband died without seeing him brought to justice. Mladic’s freedom all these years after the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war was a personal wound for Richard, the chief architect of that agreement. We cannot call Dayton a success while Mladic is free, my husband used to say.

The butcher of Srebrenica, the general whose forces laid siege to Sarajevo, was a rebuke to everything the Dayton Accords stood for: reconciliation among Serbs, Bosnians and Croats; the integration of the shattered pieces of the former Yugoslavia into the European family; a multicultural future for the blood-soaked Balkans. Mladic at large was a powerful weapon for the hate-mongers in the Balkans and a terrible blot on the face of Europe.

For my husband, it felt personal. Every time there was a Mladic sighting — in a tavern or at a football match in and around Belgrade — Richard felt it like a slap. How happy he would be to see his nemesis captured, and about to face justice for his unspeakable crimes.

I remember the summer Mladic entered our lives, as the Balkan war turned its most murderous. The frantic phone calls from Srebrenica began six weeks after our wedding. Richard’s son Anthony, who worked with refugees in nearby Tuzla, warned his father of what was coming as Europe’s biggest single mass murder unfolded.

The genocide of the area’s Muslim population was carefully choreographed. First, General Mladic’s gunners pulverized the town (allegedly in retaliation for Muslim forays into Serb territory). Then he and his troops took 30 U.N. peacekeepers hostage. Then the whole town became hostage. Mladic rounded up all the Muslims and forced them onto buses. Others were herded into a soccer field. It was a grotesque replay of a scene Europe had witnessed before, and no one stopped it.

Emboldened by the world’s passivity, Mladic then took the next step: He and his men killed thousands of Muslims, execution style, in cold blood. Srebrenica entered the lexicon of horror, along with Auschwitz and Babi Yar.

In Washington, Richard was frantically trying to rouse the Pentagon and the West Europeans to use air power to stop the massacre. Confusion and apathy paralyzed the “international system.” As usual, there were many reasons given for doing nothing.

Later that summer, when Richard was negotiating with the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, at his Belgrade villa, the Serbian leader sprung Mladic on Richard and his team. Richard refused to shake the murderer’s extended hand, but got a good description of him. “Hollywood could not have found a more convincing war villain,” he wrote. “He glowered — there was no better word for it — and engaged each of the Americans in what seemed to us, when we compared notes later, as staring contests. Nonetheless, he had a compelling presence; it was not hard to understand why his troops revered him; he was, I thought, one of those lethal combinations that history thrusts up occasionally — a charismatic murderer.”

Once the peace deal was done and the guns were silent, Richard did not feel his work was done. With Radovan Karadzic and Mladic — the evil twin masterminds of the siege of Sarajevo and the genocide of Srebrenica — at large, full implementation of the peace was impossible. He urged, pleaded really, with those in charge of implementing the Dayton Accords to arrest the two indicted war criminals — but to no avail. This was heartbreaking for my husband. Their freedom undermined everything Dayton stood for. At large, the murderers mocked the peacemakers and gave heart to the separatists and the ultranationalists. To a certain group of diehard racists, Mladic and Karadzic became folk heroes.

Now, with Mladic soon to join Karadzic in the dock, Dayton — and a multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina — have a much brighter future. Like Eichmann in the glass box, Mladic in the dock will not cut nearly as large a figure as he did after his troops took Srebrenica and he swaggered before terrified Muslim women and children, ruffled a young Muslim boy’s hair, and told him and his people that they had nothing to fear.

When the time comes for the former general to face his victims and accusers without his armed men arrayed behind him, Mladic might learn something about fear himself.

It is a very good day for humanity. I wish Richard, who died in December, were alive to see it.

According to the popular interpretation of recent events, most Serbs think of Ratko Mladić as a war hero, and do not believe that the Srebrenica massacre happened. Or do they?

For many years, the whole of Serbia has fallen into the trap of being defined by the deficiencies of its leaders. This has especially been the case with war crimes: analysts, academics and journalists have often assumed that Serbia as a whole is failing to confront its past and is in denial of the atrocities committed.

In fact, many Serbs have welcomed the arrest because they believe (and have done for a long time) that Mladić is responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre. Those who support Mladić enough to protest against his arrest are in a minority. For a lot of people, Mladić has come to be a burden and a symbol of a very dark past and the main obstacle to future progress.

At the same time, his arrest was received with a lot of cynicism – very few people in Serbia actually believe that this will bring about any real change in the country. For most of them, the Mladić arrest has been a media spectacle, but their own stance towards the arrest has been one of indifference because the majority of people in Serbia today are simply too preoccupied with the most basic existential concerns – poverty and unemployment are acute problems here.

This is not to say that they are indifferent towards the victims and atrocities: these matters are deeply disturbing to many people in Serbia. But dealing with the past is much more complicated than the arrest of one man.

What complicates matters is that, while large numbers of people do think of Mladić as a war criminal, they do not believe he should be tried at the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, and certainly that he should not be transferred for the sake of EU membership. In Serbia, this has for a long time been interpreted as a kind of blackmail and has often been met with resentment and perceived bias on the part of international justice: why, people ask, are we required to hand over our war crimes suspects, but “others” are not?

People will often point to former wartime leaders such as Bosnian Naser Orić or Kosovan Albanian Hasim Thaçi, whom they believe to have both escaped justice. Two processes are at play here: the perception that crimes committed against the Serbs have gone unrecognised and unpunished, while at the same time, people are still shocked and troubled that massacres such as Srebrenica have been committed.

Perhaps, yet again, this incident has illustrated that, while legislative processes requiring someone indicted for war crimes to appear in court may be relatively straightforward, the process which societies of the Balkans need to engage in to talk about the atrocities of the past is messy, emotionally difficult and tinged with unacknowledged resentments on all sides.

Thankfully, the civil society in the western Balkans understands this. In response to politicisation of the war crimes debate, some 1,500 regional non-governmental organisations have started an initiative for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. Perhaps the responses to the Mladić arrest will remind us of the urgent need to bring people from the Balkans together in this way.

I recently returned from a week in Iraq, where I trained an elite security force unit on human rights and the law of combat operations. Discussions regarding the responsibility of commanders for the acts of their forces migrated to the issue of the United Nations’ International Criminal Court. One Iraqi officer asked me, “If the United States believes in accountability over impunity, why are you not a party to the International Criminal Court?” I did not have a satisfactory answer.

The answer for public consumption is that U.S. accession to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, is not an imminent issue because U.S. processes for achieving accountability function well: The military and civilian courts are open, the government already is bringing cases to court where the evidence warrants, and convictions are occurring on a sufficiently regular basis. The subtext is that the Obama administration has to prioritize where to spend political capital and carefully select its fights. Nonetheless, as a nation, we need to revive the debate over joining the ICC.

The National Security Strategy and other key U.S. foreign affairs and security policy documents stress the merits of multilateralism, international partnership and working through institutions to achieve desirable foreign policy outcomes. American failure to join the ICC is a holdover from unilateralist ideologues in the George W. Bush administration. This failure is inconsistent with current U.S. national policy, which touts the ICC as a viable and appropriate forum for filing charges against Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and his Darfur co-conspirators; Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta; Lord’s Resistance Army chairman Joseph Kony in Uganda; Libyan regime leaders, including Moammar Kadafi, his son Saif Islam and his intelligence chief; and other corrupt strongmen who misuse governmental power for personal and political advantage.

Signing and ratifying the statute before the 2012 election would permit the Obama administration to act on its stated intentions to use multilateralism and international institutions as proxies for costly and treacherous U.S. unilateralism. Acceding to the Rome Statute would demonstrate leadership to our allies and set a strategic tone of multilateralism at low political cost and risk.

Though the U.S. signed the treaty in 2000 to preserve the ability to shape the statute’s evolution, both the Clinton and Bush administrations publicly opposed ratifying the ICC on the grounds that the Rome Statute compromises national sovereignty. Its critics contend the court could subject U.S. troops and officials to the jurisdiction of a politically motivated prosecutor, who would use the court’s jurisdiction over an American service member or public official to make a political point against the United States.

The Bush administration and, later, Congress conditioned certain military cooperation and aid on the execution of agreements that bound the partner states not to surrender U.S. personnel to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Strong-arming allies desperate for U.S. cooperation placed narrow and shallow U.S. interests over real partnership, which is more valuable to long-term American interests. That stance against the court’s jurisdiction was really a proxy statement for U.S. unilateralism — strategic messaging that the U.S. would not yield even a small amount of U.S. sovereignty to multilateral institutions or processes, even where the tradeoff could be substantially positive.

The ICC poses extraordinarily low risk to U.S. sovereignty, service members and public officials abroad. Under the Rome Statute’s “complementarity” principle, before the court asserts jurisdiction over a citizen, the ICC prosecutor must determine and substantiate that the citizen’s country is operating with impunity or that its judicial processes are broken or powerless. To avoid ICC jurisdiction over American service members and public officials, the United States would not have to charge, indict and bring cases to court. All that is required is for the U.S. to undertake a good-faith investigative effort of offenses under the statute and domestic law, and meaningfully assert national jurisdiction over alleged offenses.

The Rome Statute merely confirms our national social and legal instincts: to address unlawful activity appropriately and within an evenhanded, legitimate legal framework. As long as U.S. processes continue to operate and set the world standard for impartial investigations and just exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the U.S. has little to fear from the ICC.

With or without the United States, the ICC will continue to hold accountable rogue world leaders and public officials whose conduct violates the legal standards established by the Rome Statute. For certain world leaders accustomed to acting with impunity, it is the court of last resort. Acceding to and ratifying the Rome Statute would enable the U.S. to participate in future deliberations on the evolution of the statute. It also would reinforce Obama administration statements about participating fully in multilateral institutions and lend credence to administration positions on the utility of the ICC in thwarting impunity by treacherous leaders, such as Kenyan ethnic warlords and the Libyan inner circle.

Absent accession to the Rome Statute, the message America sends to the world is unprincipled: The U.S. is committed to the concept of multilateralism — except when it is not.

For a long time, Libyans have fantasized about what they would do if they could get their hands on Col. Moammar Kadafi. The idea I heard most often when I was growing up had him placed in a cage in Tripoli’s Martyrs Square, which served as the theater of executions for several Libyans who had disagreed with the dictatorship. This way, the fantasy went, every passerby would be able to spit at “the Leader.” Then, when they tired of spitting, they would hang him by the neck — as he had done to university students who failed to express the appropriate enthusiasm for his rule — and leave his corpse there until it rotted, exactly as he had done to those students.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor’s announcement that he would be seeking arrest warrants for three members of the Libyan dictatorship, including Kadafi, not only adds wind to the sails of the Libyan uprising but offers the people of this young country a unique opportunity to see justice done. One of the sinister ways in which a long-standing oppressive dictator can affect his people is to corrode their commitment to the law, leading them to confuse revenge for justice.

For the last four decades, life has taught Libyans that crimes are rewarded, that violence and lies pay. This has inspired overwhelming feelings of apathy and cynicism, particularly with regard to accountability. For Libyans, David wins only in books; in real life, Goliath comes out on top every time.

Libya declared its independence on Christmas Eve 1951. Over the country’s relatively short history, accountability has been as elusive as a half-recalled dream. After World War II, when the victorious were keen to hold the defeated to account, Mussolini’s generals did not stand trial for their colonial campaign that caused the death of nearly half the Libyan population. And in the long years of oppression by Kadafi, an atmosphere of lawlessness emerged in which the Libyan elite could do anything they wanted: beating a servant to death, stealing someone’s factory or home. Libyans had to endure this reality while at the same time watching several respectable countries offer their chief tormentor respect.

In 2004 when then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair landed in Tripoli, he did not find the Leader waiting for him on the runway. Kadafi meant this as a snub to the British. The image of Blair rushing to the mouth of the tent, where the colonel waited, seemed disgraceful.

Immediately after the news was broadcast, my brother called.

“Today,” he said, “we lost everything.”

Blair and the international community’s actions helped create a darker reality for the country. International legitimacy emboldened the Libyan dictatorship to oppress its critics even more, under the claim that they were terrorists, and his new “respectability” arguably extended Kadafi’s political life. It was demoralizing for the Libyan people to witness the extent to which Kadafi’s threats and bribes had managed to manipulate international opinion. They watched as every so often the United States offered up a Libyan or two to be “interrogated” by Kadafi’s men. Suddenly, the idea of political change seemed even more farfetched than before.

For Libyans, living in a state in which the elite bear no responsibility for their actions, in which the leadership lies without shame and gets away with it, in which people steal and live happily ever after, is isolating and depressing. It is one of the main reasons, I would argue, why — until February 2011 — an overwhelming majority of Libyans, particularly young men, used to sleep well past noon and seemed to be exceptionally dispirited and negative about the future. In the end, it was that generation that rose to take back the country. One of the nicknames of the revolution is “the Falling Jeans Revolution,” referring to the fashion trend of its chief protagonists.

It is against this reality that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a lawyer who played a crucial role in bringing the Argentine military junta to account, stood in front of the world on May 16 and announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for men who have up to now existed beyond the law. In addition to Kadafi, the court wants to arrest Seif Islam Kadafi, the dictator’s son and, until recently, the darling of the West, and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah Sanoussi, the dictator’s brother in law, a man described by Moreno-Ocampo as “the executioner.”

This is very far from the despair my brother articulated in the wake of Tony Blair’s 2004 grovelling visit. No, this to many Libyans, feels like a return to sanity.

In the past desperate few weeks, discussions have often focused on two equally bad options: the first, to kill Kadafi; the second, to negotiate with him. The ICC’s announcement represents a third and better way forward, one that would allow Libyans a meaningful chance at justice and steer them away from fantasies of revenge. Revenge builds nothing; justice is educative, teaching a society the values of accountability, the meaning of causality and responsibility. Libya deserves to see its criminals tried fairly and robustly.

Mario Onaindía, que sabía mezclar con eficacia el humor y la inteligencia, decía que a él lo que le hubiera gustado ser de verdad era hispanista inglés. Se refería, claro, a la posibilidad de observar los aconteceres de España, cuya historia le fascinaba, desde un punto de vista distante y sabio.

Por desgracia, podemos ver ahora que lo de ser anglosajón y analizar con distancia los episodios españoles no tiene por qué ir necesariamente unido.

No deseo herir la sensibilidad de Ian Gibson llamándole inglés, pero su posición fue por un tiempo la del hispanista, y años después la abandonó para lanzarse al ruedo de la bronca. Eso sí, hay que reconocer que se hizo español para alejarse de la obligada sobriedad que se exigía a su especie.

Ahora le ha correspondido a Paul Preston el turno de tocarnos las fibras sensibles. Preston ha decidido, al parecer, hacerse español y nos ha regalado un extenso catálogo de historias de horror que se agrupan bajo el sonoro título de El holocausto español.

La noticia del libro tiene un carácter mayor, tanto por la importancia del bagaje de Preston como por la recepción de que ha sido objeto. Se han llegado a decir sobre este libro cosas como que solo un extranjero podía escribir esto. Y se ha rendido pleitesía intelectual a su hiperbólica y desequilibrada narración de lo que sucedió durante la Guerra Civil de 1936. Lo de la hipérbole no viene porque se exageren los espantos vividos, sino por el nombre que le ha buscado, y lo de desequilibrada por la clasificación de los autores de esos espantos según estuvieran en un bando o en otro.

El uso de la palabra holocausto marca ya el libro desde su inicio, porque desde que los nazis procedieran al asesinato sistemático y ordenado de millones de judíos entre 1942 y 1945, conviene utilizar con cuidado el vocablo. Simplemente para entendernos mejor unos a otros. A mí se me antoja excesivo, aunque a la Real Academia Española (RAE) le baste para describir una gran matanza.

En España no hubo una acción sistemática de eliminación de un grupo social. Quizá con dos excepciones: los religiosos, que sufrieron en algunas zonas republicanas algo muy parecido al genocidio; y los masones, que padecieron lo mismo en la zona rebelde. De los primeros, murieron casi todos los que había en Lérida, por ejemplo; de los segundos, lo mismo entre los capturados por Franco. Los porcentajes de muertos en ambos grupos superan con mucho los registrados en las unidades de choque.

La espeluznante relación que ha hilado el autor con importantes ayudas locales tiene una intencionalidad evidente, que no oculta: la violencia cainita que se desarrolló desde el 17 de julio de 1936 y prolongó Franco hasta mucho después, no fue de la misma naturaleza en el lado rebelde que en el lado de quienes defendieron a la República.

De una forma muy sumaria se deduce de la lectura que los rebeldes emprendieron una tarea exterminadora como parte de un plan esencial a la naturaleza de su política, mientras que la violencia en el lado republicano fue, con excepciones que es preciso analizar, de reacción ante bombardeos, fusilamientos y otras salvajadas.

Es decir, hubo una violencia fría y programada frente a otra caliente e improvisada. Esto lo han dicho también otros historiadores, y Paul Preston lo asume.

Las herramientas para demostrarlo son variadas. La primera, la de la justificación de las violencias en el lado republicano. A las matanzas del puerto de Bilbao les preceden los bombardeos de Portugalete; al asalto a la cárcel Modelo de Madrid, le precede la carnicería de Badajoz; a la de Guadalajara, otro bombardeo. No sabemos, sin embargo, en realidad, qué es lo que precede a las matanzas sistemáticas en Castilla-La Mancha (salvo el odio a los terratenientes), o a la liquidación sistemática de pequeños comerciantes en Cataluña, por poner dos ejemplos. ¿Cabría la posibilidad de que, como ha descrito Fernando del Rey, los campesinos manchegos tuvieran claro a quiénes liquidarían en caso de conflicto, o la de que la acción de los anarquistas catalanes y los poumistas de Nin fuera tan programática como la de los rebeldes? En las proclamas de Largo Caballero también se pueden encontrar llamadas al exterminio de la clase enemiga.

Preston se extiende sobre las matanzas de Paracuellos, porque quizá sea el asunto que más ha desarbolado la teoría de la no planificación en el lado republicano, o sea, de la inocencia de los leales. Parece difícil demostrar que Azaña, Largo Caballero o el general Miaja y su ayudante Vicente Rojo estuvieran enterados del asunto. Pero en cambio es seguro que estuvieron al tanto los principales dirigentes anarquistas, como el ministro de Justicia, García Oliver, y todo el aparato del Partido Comunista de España. La literatura de la época señala incluso a Margarita Nelken, aún entonces en las filas socialistas, a la que Preston se esfuerza en desligar de toda complicidad. No fue un crimen del Gobierno, pero sí de una parte del aparato que estaba en él o lo sustentaba.

Es decir, que el asunto es complejo. Como lo es el del análisis de lo sucedido con los franquistas. Cada vez parece más difícil demostrar que la matanza que pretendían, bien expresada en las directivas de Mola (que se cumplieron), tuviera que desembocar en un exterminio, en un holocausto. Fue una tremenda escabechina que se prolongó hasta 1943 con un saldo de no menos de 150.000 muertos, que no es preciso multiplicar para que nos ponga los pelos de punta. Pero una matanza que, como bien ha demostrado otro inglés llamado Julius Ruiz, no tenía fines comparables a los hitlerianos. Preston insiste, para demostrar que tenía esos fines, en la más que excesiva teoría de la guerra larga, heredada de Dionisio Ridruejo e Hilari Raguer, según la cual Franco prolongó a propósito la guerra para matar con más comodidad. Una teoría que yo creo que ya está desacreditada por abundante documentación.

En el conteo de Badajoz, se incurre a mi juicio en un riesgo de sobrevaloración al hablar de más de 8.000 asesinados, siguiendo a Espinosa. ¿Es que nos parecen pocos 4.000 o 6.000? Es la misma técnica aplicada por César Vidal en Paracuellos, ya desenmascarada entre otros por Javier Cervera. (No puedo evitar sumar un dato a esta historia: Vidal incluye como víctima de Paracuellos a mi tío Manolo, con el que traté muchos años, y yo juro que respiraba).

El libro de Preston no es, por desgracia, una actualización rigurosa de lo sucedido durante la guerra, ni en los números ni en las razones. Y cojea en ocasiones de forma escandalosa, como cuando explica que en Cataluña y el País Vasco la represión se volcó sobre todo contra los nacionalistas, lo que contrasta con los datos que explican que en esas dos regiones el régimen de Franco mató proporcionalmente menos que en casi cualquier otra parte de España.

El trabajo de Preston contribuye a encender los ánimos de quienes consideran que las cosas de la guerra no se han liquidado bien, pero aporta irónicamente alguna perspectiva consoladora para creyentes en la justicia divina: en el epílogo se puede comprobar con satisfacción cómo los verdugos sufrieron su castigo. Unos murieron atacados por el cáncer; otros, se volvieron locos y mataron a sus propios hijos; otros, se arrepintieron de forma pública. ¿Castigo de Dios? Preston no cree que fuera cosa del altísimo, pero nos muestra que castigo sí tuvieron.

Lo que Preston no demuestra es que hubiera un holocausto; ni siquiera que hubiera una intención programática de exterminar. Franco, Mola (y tantos otros) fueron seres despiadados y asesinos, pero no anunciaron a Hitler, por mucho que sus intenciones fueran claramente homicidas.

Y de “los nuestros”, qué decir. Hubo de todo. Aunque tuvieran razón en defender el régimen legítimo.

En la entrega de los legajos más tristes de Argentina, el informe sobre la mortífera acción de la dictadura, Ernesto Sabato le dice a Raúl Alfonsín que ese periodo sobre el que arrojó su mirada ya incierta y espantada había dado de sí ese término, “desaparecidos”, que ahora circulaba por todo el mundo como un “triste privilegio argentino”.

Ese momento, en el que él describe con esa contradicción, “triste privilegio”, marcaría para siempre la frente de Sabato, la de su pasado como escritor de ficciones y la de su futuro como hombre público. Pues ya dejaría de ser, precisamente a causa de esa imagen, el autor de Sobre héroes y tumbas para ser, casi siempre, el autor de ese prólogo espantado que luego los que rehacen la historia terminarían rehaciendo a su modo.

Ernesto Sabato quiso esa imagen, y esa imagen ya iba a ser su imagen para siempre, en vida, en la débil trayectoria de sus últimos años, postrado en Santos Lugares, a la espera del final del túnel del que hizo metáfora y sugerencia. Pero él lo quiso, era su compromiso con la historia y con su país atravesado por el triste privilegio de la desdicha, ese perro que nos persigue. Su trabajo en la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, Conadep, no fue una labor tortuosa sino en lo que significaba; lo hizo como un patriota, dejó ahí su energía, a favor de su país, para reconstruir una historia triste (esa es la palabra) de la que había nacido el triste privilegio de ser el lugar común en el que se pone nombre a una figura que ya ronda la cabeza de la historia universal de la infamia: los desaparecidos.

Esa imagen, pues, no interrumpió a Sabato, lo rehízo como hombre, le dio un lugar distinto en el mundo, lo desplazó hacia sí mismo porque le hundió en el alma una convicción de la que ya había de estar constituida su mente. Pasara lo que pasara ya iba a haber dos Sabato, el que firmó aquel prólogo y el que firmó sus libros, los que tenía hasta entonces, que son los más importantes que hizo nunca.

Como escritor existencialista y pesimista que fue nunca hubiera sido capaz de imaginar alimentos tan horribles de la realidad o de la imaginación como los que vio en esos legajos que Videla y los suyos dejaron para que fueran triste privilegio de los argentinos (y no solo de los argentinos). Así que su obra, en su mente y en el conocimiento universal de su figura, pasaría a segundo plano, porque la realidad que él describió superaba cualquier otro adjetivo de la imaginación.

Ese fue un drama para Sabato que él aceptó con gallardía, a pesar de que en algún momento le empezó a pesar demasiado. Horacio Salas ha escrito en Clarín que muchas veces Sabato dijo, en un viaje a Europa posterior a la presentación de aquel informe a la patria en la persona de Alfonsín, que hubiera preferido ser conocido por su obra. Pero así son las cosas, la historia las va empujando, y las obras son una pavesa de la que la gente se olvida. ¿Cuántos no olvidan La náusea de su admirado Sartre o El extranjero de su admirado Camus para acordarse solo de las posiciones civiles que mantuvieron ambos titanes de la imaginación existencialista?

Un día, después de ese viaje europeo y por tanto de esa presentación histórica del estudio sobre la ignominia que no quedó impune, Sabato vino a Madrid, en ese momento proveniente de Alicante, donde recibió uno de esos múltiples homenajes que se acentuaron precisamente después de esa comparecencia ante Alfonsín. Le fui a recoger al aeropuerto y le llevé hasta la sede de la Embajada argentina, en la que entonces era viejo y destartalado hasta el inmenso alfom-brón sobre el que descansaban nuestros pies. Estábamos sentados en aquella atmósfera otoñal, como la de la Argentina que habían dejado los militares, cuando Sabato se levantó súbitamente y me pidió que le acompañara hasta el jardincillo contiguo, “pues tengo que consultarle algo muy privado”.

Imaginé que entonces Sabato creería que aún habría micrófonos delatores dejados allí por antiguos moradores militaristas; pero no. En realidad quería preguntarme, y así lo hizo, “¿por qué me odia Rafael Conte?”.

Rafael Conte era el crítico literario de EL PAÍS, que esa mañana había escrito, me informaba el propio Sabato, “un artículo sobre escritores argentinos, y no me cita”. ¿Por qué me odia Rafael Conte?, me preguntó.

Como yo mismo había leído el artículo le pude responder en seguida: “Porque trata de escritores muertos, don Ernesto”.

Sabato se tranquilizó de inmediato. Pero la anécdota se me quedó. Y ahora ha resurgido en mi memoria como un dato periférico que tiene que ver con esa ansiedad con la que Sabato fue viendo que su obra se iba en el viaje literario del olvido para dar paso a otro personaje, que era el hombre que le había puesto nombres y adjetivos (“el triste privilegio argentino”) al periodo más ominoso de la historia de su país. Él quería ser el Sabato de sus obras (no solo, quizá, pero sí sobre todo). Ahora que ha muerto y quedan sus obras, aunque quede sin duda la crónica de su espanto, vendría bien recordar que el viejo Sabato que reclamaba atención para sus libros tenía razones de peso para lamentar que se le leyera como si fuera tan solo un hombre con una dolorida, justa, inolvidable pancarta: nunca más aquel triste privilegio argentino.

Todo el mundo aborrece a un hipócrita. Cuando los Estados predican virtudes que no practican o ponen menos trabas a los aliados, los interlocutores comerciales o los correligionarios que a otros, irritación y falta de colaboración es lo menos que pueden esperarse. El de la adopción de decisiones internacionales es un asunto pragmático y cínico, pero la tolerancia para la doble vara de medir tiene sus límites.

Rusia lo descubrió cuando invocó la doctrina del “deber de proteger” para intentar justificar su invasión de Georgia en 2008. El fomento de la democracia por parte de los Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea resulta ridículo cuando se aplica sólo a las elecciones en las que triunfan aquellos a quienes se considera aceptables,  a diferencia de lo que ocurrió con la votación de 2008 en Gaza, en la que triunfó Hamás. Los Estados que cuentan con armas nucleares siguen comprobando mediante los contratiempos que fortalecer el régimen de no proliferación resulta difícil de justificar cuando resulta que en materia de desarme avanzan a paso de tortuga.

Y la invasión del Iraq en 2003 sigue siendo un regalo para los descontentos del mundo: aceptar las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad sólo cuando se consigue lo que se pretende, pero prescindir de él o socavarlo cuando no, no es la forma de fomentar un orden internacional cooperativo y basado en las normas.

Pero en el mundo real, ¿hasta qué punto se puede ser coherente al reaccionar ante genocidios y otras atrocidades en gran escala, incumplimientos de tratados, violaciones de las fronteras u otras conculcaciones graves del derecho internacional? Exigir que se traten igual todos los casos que parezcan iguales podría poner el listón demasiado alto y, desde luego, quienes afirmen que, si no se puede actuar en todas partes, no se debe hacerlo en ninguna, corren el riesgo de llegar a ser rehenes de los críticos, como los que atacan la intervención en Libia.

Los casos más difíciles, los que siempre inspiran las emociones más intensas, son los que entrañan la utilización coercitiva de la fuerza militar. ¿Por qué golpear en Libia, pero no en Darfur… o en el Yemen, Baréin o Siria? Si las de la intervención militar en Libia y en Côte d’Ivoire fueron decisiones correctas, ¿por qué no lo fue la invasión del Iraq en 2003, en vista de los numerosos crímenes de Sadam? ¿Qué crédito puede tener el deber de proteger cuando sabemos que, por grave que sea la situación en el Tíbet, en Xinjiang o en el norte del Cáucaso, una intervención militar contra China o Rusia siempre quedará excluida?

El ex Presidente de los EE.UU. George Bush no se anduvo con “sutilezas” precisamente, como tampoco lo hacen la mayoría de los expertos en política exterior del mundo, pero precisamente la sutileza es lo que se necesita y hay instrumentos para aplicarla en las cinco pruebas de legitimidad para la utilización de la fuerza –en cualquier situación y no sólo en la de crímenes atroces en gran escala– recomendadas por el ex Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas Kofi Annan y el grupo de expertos de alto nivel que éste nombró para que asesoraran en la Cumbre Mundial de 2005 sobre las reformas del sistema  mundial de seguridad.

Ni la Asamblea General ni el Consejo de Seguridad han aprobado aún oficialmente esas directrices, que siguen siendo un simple ruido de fondo en los debates internacionales actuales, pero su utilidad práctica, combinada con un largo pedigrí filosófico, justifica un relieve público mucho mayor.

La primera prueba es la de la gravedad del riesgo: ¿es el daño que amenaza de  una clase y una magnitud que justifiquen prima facie la utilización de la fuerza? El riesgo de un inminente baño de sangre civil era tan real en Bengasi y en Abidján el mes pasado como lo era en Ruanda en 1994. En cambio, no había ese riesgo inminente en el Iraq en 2003, aunque lo había habido antes, desde luego, durante más de un decenio para los kurdos del norte del país y los chiítas del sur.

Las situaciones actuales en Baréin, el Yemen y Siria están en el límite: son horribles, pero de pequeña magnitud y tal vez remediables mediante presiones que excluyan la intervención militar (que los EE.UU. y sus aliados podrían aplicar mucho más útilmente).

La segunda prueba es la de si el objetivo primordial de la propuesta intervención militar es el de detener o impedir la amenaza de que se trate. Libia la aprueba, como la mayoría de los otros casos recientes: si la motivación primordial hubiera sido el petróleo o el cambio de régimen, la Liga Árabe y el Consejo de Seguridad nunca habrían aprobado la intervención militar. En cambio, a Rusia le resultó difícil encontrar a alguien que aceptara su afirmación de que la razón primordial para su aventura de 2008 en Osetia del Sur fue la protección civil.

La tercera prueba es la de si se han analizado todas las opciones no militares y se han considerado inviables. Una vez más, el de Libia era un caso de manual: la resolución 1970 aplicaba sanciones específicas, un embargo de armas y la amenaza de procesamiento en el Tribunal Penal Internacional para centrar la atención del coronel Muamar El Gadafi en la protección civil. Sólo cuando fracasaron se aceptó –en la resolución 1973– el recurso a la opción militar. En el Iraq en 2003, no se habían agotado ni mucho menos las opciones previas, cosa que también se puede afirmar ahora en los casos de Baréin, el Yemen y Siria.

La cuarta prueba es de proporcionalidad: ¿son la magnitud, la duración y la intensidad de la propuesta intervención militar el mínimo necesario para afrontar la amenaza? Como en Libia se perfila un punto muerto militar, habrá la tentación cada vez mayor de hacer extensiva la autoridad legal de las Naciones Unidas –y el apoyo moral y político que la acompaña– hasta un punto insostenible y la OTAN está ahora cerca de esa línea. Si quiere preservar su crédito y la capacidad del mundo para intervenir en casos similares que conmocionan la conciencia humana, no debe cruzarla.

Con la prueba final –y por lo general más sólida– de legitimidad se intentan equilibrar las consecuencias. ¿Se beneficiará o se perjudicará a quienes corren riesgo? Eso fue siempre lo que impidió actuar en Darfur: cualquier intento de invasión del Sudán habría sido desastroso para los dos millones de desplazados y habría vuelto a avivar el conflicto, aún más mortífero, entre el Norte y el Sur de ese país.

Esa prueba explica la impunidad efectiva de China, Rusia y otras grandes potencias: por grave que sea su comportamiento interno, cualquier intento de invasión desencadenaría una conflagración mucho mayor. Para poner fin al sufrimiento de Libia, hará falta algo más que la intervención militar, pero, como en Côte d’Ivoire, resulta difícil sostener que la utilización de la fuerza vaya a costar más vidas que las que salvará,

Mantener un rumbo intermedio entre la doble vara de medir y la necesaria selectividad es difícil, pero, cuando se examinan con los criterios idóneos, casos que en un principio parecen iguales, con frecuencia resultan muy diferentes. Aun cuando no lo sean, no cabe duda de que entra en juego un principio superior. Cuando nuestra humanidad común está amenazada, aun cuando no podamos hacer todo lo que deberíamos, ¿no deberíamos hacer al menos lo que podamos?

More than 30 years after the murderous Khmer Rouge were driven from power in Cambodia, the U.N.-backed effort to bring justice to the victims of the killing fields stands on the brink of ignominious failure due to political interference from the Cambodian government and the indifference of the international community.

A hybrid court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, has spent over $200 million since it was set up in 2003 with both international and local judges and prosecutors. It has tried only one person: Kang Kech Eav, or Duch, the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison complex, who is appealing his conviction for crimes against humanity, murder and torture.

Now Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken an axe to further proceedings. In power for over 25 years, Hun Sen has repeatedly and publicly declared that the court should try only one more case (case “002” in court parlance), against four detained senior ex-Khmer Rouge leaders, all of whom are in their late 70s or 80s.

As for five additional unnamed suspects, whom the court’s pre-trial chamber approved for investigation, Hun Sen bluntly informed U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon late last year that they would not be “allowed” to go forward.

The reason offered is the supposed threat any additional trial would pose to peace in Cambodia. Others suspect that the prime minister is simply enforcing a pact he long ago cut within his ruling Cambodian People’s Party that none of its ex-Khmer Rouge members would ever be tried or otherwise exposed for crimes they committed, no matter how serious.

Other actors have their own reasons for acquiescing in this. Donors want to save money and are anxious for the court to wind up operations.

Having invested more than a decade in negotiations to launch the court and keep it alive, the United Nations finds it hard to walk away now. It is institutionally committed to the court, even though in 2002, then-secretary general Kofi Annan recommended against U.N. involvement in a tribunal which he rightly believed lacked adequate protections against precisely the kind of political interference that is blocking the additional cases.

Mr. Annan was compelled by pressure from the United States, Australia, France and Japan to accept the present flawed structure (the International Criminal Court is limited to prosecuting crimes that were committed after it was established in 2002).

Court officials are thus caught in a trap. The fearful Cambodian staff must respond to political pressures. Even international staffers feel constrained to focus their efforts on making the most of case 002, given the unlikelihood of any further trials.

As a result, the right course of action — allowing all cases currently before the judges to proceed through to completion — now seems unattainable. Advocates of impartial justice are faced, as they have been throughout the morally tainted history of this tribunal, with a choice of lesser evils.

One option under discussion would involve deception. According to various sources, court officials might “gracefully” dispose of the additional five suspects, for example, by presumptively finding that none of them are among those “most responsible” for Khmer Rouge crimes, as the governing statute requires. Such a move would implicate the court in a political decision to halt proceedings.

Unfortunately, this is where things seem to be headed. By their own awkward admission, the Cambodian and international judges responsible for investigating the additional cases have restricted their staff to desk review; no field investigation is underway. This month the deputy national co-prosecutor reaffirmed there would be no further prosecutions. The fix, it seems, is in.

A preferable, if still distasteful, alternative, would be to honestly horse-trade abandonment of the additional cases in exchange for a guarantee of total government cooperation, and full donor resources, for case 002.

The United Nations and the Cambodian authorities should openly declare that the hybrid court will cease operations after conclusion of case 002 due to government objections and the lack of continued funding. As part of the squalid bargain, the government should publicly commit itself to lifting its illegal veto of the pending witness summonses and comply swiftly with any other court order or request.

Even with these conditions fulfilled, victims of the Khmer Rouge will be cheated of the more comprehensive accountability further trials would have produced. And every Cambodian will know that all the will the international community could muster was not sufficient to create a truly independent court. It’s time for the U.N. to end the charade.

Peter Klashorst says it was just another regular day of heat, hawkers and honking in Cambodia’s capital when his walking paintings caused a stir on the street.

Portraits more than six and a half feet high and nearly four feet wide floated by — the large canvases cloaking the men carrying them — leaving pedestrians befuddled and even distressed.

The Dutch artist thinks some people recognized the iconic faces he had rendered: Those of prisoners tortured in the Khmer Rouge’s infamous S-21 prison. Memories of this death machine and its victims remain among the most indelible images of Cambodia’s nightmare revolution in the late 1970s, in which an estimated 1.7 million people perished.

Klashorst himself was anxious to gain some distance from the paintings. Looking at the portraits one night in his Phnom Penh apartment, he said, he found the eyes of the victims had “taken on a life of their own.” So he rented a nearby studio to store his paintings and hired a crew of idle motorbike taxi drivers to transport them there on foot.

The exodus was Klashorst’s attempt to expunge the faces from his sleep. In the process, it appears that he introduced them back into the psyches of the unsuspecting denizens of Street No. 130, where people were chewing sugar cane or handing back change one minute, only to be caught by the stare of a tortured soul the next. By Klashorst’s measure, the effect his portraits of Khmer Rouge victims created on the street should have been a sign of his project’s success. “I wanted to paint their brainwaves, to bring them back to life,” he told me.

Klashorst’s work tends to elicit a strong response. He’s been charged with indecency in Senegal and Gambia for painting nude prostitutes, and in Kenya, where he was charged with witchcraft, he narrowly evaded punishment by hiding in a forest.

Now, in Cambodia, the 54-year-old Klashorst has taken on a more intensely somber project, guided by the black-and-white photographs that the authorities at S-21 took of newly arrived prisoners.

These mug shots have been displayed on the grounds of the former prison since the 1980s, when it reopened as a museum, and they also appeared as court documents last year when a specially designed United Nations-backed war crimes court in Phnom Penh sentenced the commandant of S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, to 30 years in prison. Better known as Comrade Duch, he was the first high official of the Khmer Rouge to be held to account. Four other senior leaders await trial this year.

Klashorst told me he wanted to add depth to images that had until now been used only for forensic purposes. “They were photographed as slaughterhouse animals, but I tried to paint them as human beings to restore their humanity.”

His technique was to combine an electric palette of spray paint over faces brush-painted in black. Klashorst said he was drawn to paint those prisoners who displayed defiance even on the eve of their annihilation. The beauty of the faces is perhaps the most prominent feature in Klashorst’s depictions, beauty that stands in stark contrast to their austere uniforms and crudely cropped hair.

The portraits were designed for an exhibit inside S-21 itself. But there was a last-minute hold-up when officials questioned whether the works’ unorthodox style qualified as art. Their objections were overcome and the paintings are currently on display in a building of S-21 that once housed shackled prisoners.

Klashorst said he saw no reason to apologize for his approach. Those imprisoned, he said, may have had aspirations as eclectic and colorful as the style in which he painted them. Pointing to a portrait of a young woman, he said: “Maybe she wanted to be a movie star or something like that.”

Cambodia’s war crimes court has focused on holding senior Khmer Rouge officials accountable for their crimes — an important endeavor in a country where rule of law is precarious and impunity rampant.

But with so many lives lost, a survivor of S-21 named Chum Mey told me, the stories of the victims are worth telling, even if imperfectly.

Sitting on a shaded bench on the grounds of the museum, Chum Mey told me how he managed to be among a handful of S-21’s estimated 14,000 prisoners to survive. Though he faced the same sadistic torture that other inmates suffered, his usefulness as a skilled car mechanic prevented his execution.

He says that the ghosts of his fellow prisoners still roam through his mind, and that it’s good for others to look at the portraits and share the experience, if only for a moment.

“Holocaust” is the word used to describe the systematic extermination of millions of innocent European Jews during World War II. In the aftermath of this mammoth failure of humanity, many nations “repented” and declared that “never again” would such inhumanity and absolute disregard for human dignity and life be tolerated.

Yet on Jan. 1, the regime of Kim Jong Il warned that a “nuclear holocaust” would be inevitable if South Korea engaged the North in war. While the world watches peoples in the Middle East and North Africa rise up against tyranny, another people suffers on the Korean Peninsula. And that Pyongyang so irreverently invoked this term to describe its so-called necessary defense is a stark reminder of the genocidal and inhumane nature of Kim Jong Il’s regime and the atrocities it has committed against millions of innocents.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, called on the international community in 2004 to investigate “political genocide” in North Korea. In response to reports of “North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families” and the “chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies . . . all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism,” the group’s chairman, Avner Shalev, wrote to then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that “the issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the U.N.”

In other words, the world’s foremost authorities on genocide appealed to the international community, one of the few rays of hope for the North Korean people, who are trapped in a living hell.

An estimated 1 million innocent men, women and children have been murdered in North Korean political concentration camps since 1972, academics believe.

Virtually nothing has been done to speed the closure of these camps since 2004, though the testimony of tens of thousands of refugees provides mounting evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Outside observers and nongovernmental organizations estimate that 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation between 1995 and 1997. They continue to die in huge numbers in a government-organized famine akin to the Holodomor famine-genocide in Ukraine (1932-33), which was orchestrated by Joseph Stalin. Billions in humanitarian aid have been shipped to North Korea, more than enough to feed the nation’s population, but government and academic studies have revealed that North Korea systematically diverted the aid, using it to bolster its military might while millions, for whom the aid was intended, starved to death.

Raphael Lemkin’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide included political murders in its first draft definition of genocide, but Stalin objected, the definition was amended and the Soviet Union was not held accountable for the tens of millions of innocents murdered without just cause by starvation and in the Gulag. Some have incorrectly concluded that mass murder and genocide in North Korea would also be exempt from prosecution under the convention.

This is not the case. North Korea has been considered the world’s worst persecutor of Christians for many years by objective researchers of religious persecution such as Open Doors and Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Soon Ok Lee, one of the few survivors of the North Korean concentration camp system, has testified before Congress and later told MSNBC that “since the Korean War — in Korea they call it June 25 War — the No. 1 enemy is God. Kim II Sung hated God most.”

It is common knowledge among refugees and people who follow North Korea that those discovered to have any kind of faith or religious belief — and their families, to three generations — are executed or sent to concentration camps for life. This constitutes genocide under Article 2 of the convention; consequently, the world has not only the moral duty but also the legal right and obligation, under Article 8, to intervene.

Actions that all of us in the free world can, and must, take immediately to save the North Korean people and stop the crimes against humanity include:

l An NGO strike. The nongovernmental organizations supporting the genocidal Pyongyang regime must withdraw all support from Kim Jong Il immediately and unambiguously declare their action a protest of the North’s concentration camps, systematic diversion of food aid and mass atrocities.

l Use our resources effectively. The United States, South Korea, Japan and the rest of the international community must recognize that there is a way to effectively save those in desperate need. It is through the refugees, most of whom still have relatives and friends in the North with whom they are in secret communication. North Korean refugees and their ally organizations must be provided all possible resources.

l Mass demonstrations. Never have more than 100,000 people gathered to protest the mass atrocities in North Korea. All who object to the genocide must organize, assemble and make their voices heard.

We should get to work immediately, realizing that we are already far too late.

Croatia is headed toward another war. The Balkans – again – will explode with violence. It is only a matter of time. And the so-called “international community” has been pivotal in stoking the flames of ethnic conflict.

Recently, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in The Hague, Netherlands, sentenced Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina to 24 years in prison. The ICTY’s ruling rightly has sparked angry protests across Croatia.

Gen. Gotovina has been convicted for having “command responsibility” over an August 1995 military campaign, known as Operation Storm, that effectively ended the Croat-Serbian war. The ICTY alleges that the Croatian general oversaw the expulsion of 100,000 ethnic Serbs and the murder of hundreds of civilians. According to the United Nations war crimes court, the campaign constituted a “joint criminal enterprise.”

The ICTY’s verdict is preposterous and outrageous. Gen. Gotovina is not a war criminal; rather, he is a Croatian patriot and hero whose campaign restored Croatia’s territorial integrity. Moreover, it delivered a decisive blow to the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s dream of a “Greater Serbia.”

From 1991 until 1995, Milosevic’s marauders rampaged across the region. He used the disintegration of Yugoslavia – a synthetic multinational state – to advance his goal of establishing a Great Serbian empire stretching from the Danube to the Adriatic. In Croatia, Serbian paramilitaries – aided and abetted by the Yugoslav army – waged a brutal war of aggression. The result: A third of Croatia’s territory was annexed, more than 180,000 Croatians were ethnically cleansed, and nearly 20,000 civilians were murdered. Milosevic’s aim was to unite the truncated parts of Croatia with the nearly 70 percent of territory his forces had carved out in neighboring Bosnia. Call it state-building through genocidal partition.

Operation Storm put a stop to all of this. Gen. Gotovina’s army launched a U.S.-backed offensive that was a stunning success: Civilian casualties were minimized, the campaign lasted just three days, and the crushing defeat of the rebel Serbs eventually paved the way for the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.

Moreover, numerous media outlets – The Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Jerusalem Post – have investigated Operation Storm and have concluded that Gen. Gotovina is innocent of any wrongdoing. He never personally ordered or tolerated the commission of any crimes. In fact, the ICTY’s prosecution was dismal on this point. It failed to show any kind of proof that Gen. Gotovina was responsible for orchestrating a criminal conspiracy. The reason is a simple one: He couldn’t have.

The orders to evacuate the Serbian population from the so-called “Krajina” zone of occupation came from Belgrade several days before the commencement of Operation Storm. Milosevic, realizing he was facing a military humiliation, ordered Croatia’s Serbs transferred to Bosnia and Kosovo to consolidate his revanchist gains there. This was done before Croatian forces even launched their campaign. Hence, the entire Gotovina conviction and prosecution rests on a giant fraud: The removal of the Serbian population occurred under the explicit command of local Serb authorities acting under the authority of Belgrade. Therefore, Croatian forces could not have committed “ethnic cleansing.” The ICTY verdict is a sham.

The U.N. court is a politicized vehicle that aspires to render history’s final judgment on the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And its verdict is clear: All sides were guilty of atrocities; no party – or nation – was more responsible than the other. This is what Serbia has been demanding for years. It has sought to cover its genocidal culpability and national shame with moral equivalence.

Hence, the Gotovina conviction is a major triumph for Belgrade. Already, Serbian revanchists are claiming that the ICTY’s ruling enables Croatia’s international borders to be altered. Led by the odious Tomislav Nikolic, Belgrade’s nationalists are surging in the polls. They are demanding the restoration of a Greater Serbia. The ICTY has shown them the way forward: If Croatia’s war for independence was a “joint criminal enterprise,” then the entire Croatian state – by that twisted logic – is founded upon war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

This is why Croatia’s ruling party, the HDZ, should never have sent Gen. Gotovina to The Hague. That it was a precondition for Zagreb’s entry into the European Union only underscores how reckless and contrary to Croatia’s national interests fast-track European Union membership is. The HDZ claims it will help Gen. Gotovina’s legal team with the verdict’s appeal. This is a dollar short and a day late. The ICTY is a kangaroo court determined to make an example out of the Croatian general. His fate is sealed no matter what the Croatian government does – and HDZ leaders know this.

The HDZ regime is fundamentally treasonous. After having won the war, Zagreb is losing the peace. The HDZ has betrayed Gen. Gotovina, the country’s veterans and Croatia’s hard-won independence. It has sold Croatia down the river in a mad dash to appease Brussels. The HDZ must be defeated, swept into the dustbin of history and replaced with a new conservative party – one that will provide voters with a real patriotic-populist option.

Croatians must demand that Zagreb end its unconditional cooperation with the ICTY, withdraw its bid to join the EU, free Gen. Gotovina, have all cases at The Hague transferred to domestic courts and insist that the ICTY stop its assault on Croatia’s territorial legitimacy. In short, it is time to put Croatia first.

The ICTY’s ruling has given ultranationalist Serbs what they want: another shot at splintering Croatia. The winds of war are blowing. Handing over Gen. Gotovina to The Hague was a colossal mistake. Zagreb will rue the day.

El juez Richard Goldstone ha sido condenado por muchos defensores de los derechos humanos en Israel por su conclusión de que Israel dirigió ataques intencionales contra civiles palestinos como política durante la guerra de Gaza de 2008-9. El informe de Goldstone, respaldado por las Naciones Unidas, acusó de crímenes de guerra tanto a ​​israelíes como a palestinos, y pidió a ambos bandos  investigar, enjuiciar y castigar a sus propios hombres.

El gobierno israelí reaccionó con furia ante los esfuerzos de Goldstone. Ahora está siendo condenado por algunos críticos del historial de violaciones de los derechos humanos de Israel por retractarse de su afirmación de que hubo intencionalidad. La controversia ilustra el cuidado que se requiere al elaborar y publicar informes de derechos humanos.

Lo que no es objeto de controversia sobre el “Informe Goldstone” es la determinación de los hechos en que se basan sus conclusiones. En circunstancias difíciles, y sin la cooperación del gobierno israelí, Goldstone documentó en detalle un gran número de ataques israelíes que mataron a varios cientos de civiles, hirieron a miles y destruyeron una parte significativa de la infraestructura civil de Gaza.

Goldstone también documentó ataques contra civiles israelíes por parte de Hamás y no se limitó a discutir solo los cohetes notoria e indiscriminadamente disparados desde Gaza. Goldstone incluyó en su informe un análisis detallado del secuestro realizado por Hamás del soldado israelí Gilad Shalit y su negativa a permitir que ni siquiera el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja lo viera.

Es extremadamente difícil probar una política de intencionalidad política al  realizar investigaciones de derechos humanos. Es por ello que Human Rights Watch, que abarcó gran parte del mismo terreno que Goldstone en sus propios informes, sobre Gaza no llegó a esa conclusión… y también fue denunciado enérgicamente por quienes desean hacer públicas las violaciones de Israel contra los derechos humanos.

Sin embargo, eso no significa que sea erróneo para un investigador experimentado como Goldstone, al examinar la evidencia que recopiló, inferir intencionalidad del patrón y la cantidad de abusos. En algunos casos, la evidencia exige un juicio sobre tal asunto.

El Informe Goldstone original pudo haber limitado a su conclusión a la afirmación de que Israel no cumplió su obligación, en el marco del derecho internacional sobre conflictos armados, de adoptar todas las medidas posibles para reducir al mínimo los daños a la población civil. Sin embargo, debido a que Goldstone fue más allá y encontró a una política de intencionalidad, antes de modificar dicha conclusión, debería haber insistido (basándose en evidencia adicional) en que su conclusión no estaba justificada. En lugar de ello, Goldstone señala que su retractación se basa en el hecho de que “Israel ha dedicado importantes recursos a investigar las más de 400 denuncias de graves negligencias operacionales en Gaza.”

Suena impresionante. Sin embargo, que yo sepa, esta investigación hasta ahora no ha tenido como consecuencia el procesamiento y sanción penal de ningún soldado u autoridad israelí por violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidos en contra de un civil en Gaza. Sólo tres han dado lugar a una acusación. Más aún, no hay señal alguna de que las investigaciones israelíes aborden asuntos de políticas.

En otras palabras, la retractación de Goldstone no está justificada por la evidencia sobre la que ahora dice que se basa, o es prematuro. Como mínimo, alivia gran parte de la presión sobre las autoridades israelíes para proseguir con las causas judiciales que se han realizado de buena fe. Hubiera sido mejor esperar los resultados de las investigaciones de las autoridades israelíes.

La parte más importante de la realización de un informe sobre violaciones de derechos humanos es recoger los hechos con precisión. Esto debe hacerse de manera justa, de manera que el énfasis desproporcionado en los abusos de uno de los bandos no cree distorsiones. Y hay que hacerlo con una rapidez que sea compatible con la precisión y la equidad, a fin de que esa información se pueda usar de manera eficaz para ayudar a prevenir violaciones adicionales.

Al retirar su conclusión de que Israel tenía una política de atacar civiles de manera intencional, Goldstone no ha dicho que esta conclusión, basada en la evidencia a su disposición en ese momento, fuera equivocada.  Más bien, han dicho que las investigaciones posteriores de las autoridades israelíes le han hecho modificarla.

La evidencia disponible para él y nosotros acerca de estas investigaciones es demasiado escasa como para justificar un cambio así. Al retractarse basándose en tales razones, Goldstone transmite a los israelíes la noción de que pueden recibir la absolución de una voz muy respetada de la comunidad internacional si es que dan la impresión de estar investigando las denuncias. Sin embargo, sigue sin tacha su distinguido historial de esfuerzos por garantizar que las violaciones de los derechos humanos se conozcan de manera justa y precisa.

En voyageant à Abidjan et à l’ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire la semaine dernière, et alors que tous les efforts étaient entrepris pour déloger l’ancien président Laurent Gbagbo, j’ai été saisi par l’odeur de la mort.

Dans le quartier Carrefour de Duékoué, au siège abandonné de l’une des milices belligérantes, j’ai regardé au fond d’un puits profond. Aucun corps n’était visible, mais l’odeur était sans équivoque. Personne ne sait combien de cadavres se trouvent à l’intérieur. C’est maintenant que va commencer le travail macabre de récupération et d’identification des corps.

Ailleurs, l’étendue du massacre commence déjà à émerger. Dans deux incidents sanglants, le dernier en date du 28 mars, plus de 300 personnes ont été tuées. Les casques bleus marocains envoyés sur place ont compté jusqu’à présent 255 corps, mais bien d’autres sont encore cachés en brousse et dans plusieurs endroits difficiles d’accès. Une équipe de la division des droits de l’homme de l’ONU est également présente sur les lieux. Son rôle est de collecter les preuves pour faire la lumière sur le déroulement des faits.

Le tableau est nuancé. Selon l’information dont dispose le bureau du Haut-Commissariat aux droits de l’homme, le premier incident a eu lieu dans la zone contrôlée par les forces fidèles au président arrêté, Laurent Gbagbo. Les victimes étaient pour la plupart des membres du groupe ethnique Dioula, qui ont majoritairement soutenu Alassane Ouattara, le rival de Laurent Gbagbo, largement reconnu comme le vainqueur des élections et président légitime du pays. Le deuxième incident a eu lieu dans une zone sous le contrôle des forces loyales à M. Ouattara, et les victimes étaient pour la plupart des Gueré, souvent considérés comme soutenant l’ancien président Gbagbo. Les corps retrouvés portaient des vêtements civils.

Le nombre exact de personnes ayant trouvé la mort à Abidjan n’est pas connu. La division des droits de l’homme de l’ONU évalue le nombre de morts à plus de 400. En raison des risques liés à l’insécurité, les cadavres n’ont pas été systématiquement ramassés. Les hôpitaux sont à court de médicaments et la nourriture est rare, laissant de nombreuses personnes apeurées et affamées.

Les forces de maintien de la paix des Nations unies ont utilisé des véhicules blindés pour évacuer les diplomates et les journalistes pris dans les combats à Cocody, le quartier proche de la résidence présidentielle où Laurent Gbagbo a lâché prise. Mais les populations locales n’ont pas eu les mêmes moyens pour fuir.

Le président Ouattara a dit qu’il mettrait tout en oeuvre pour mettre fin à la violence d’origine ethnique. “Je vais créer une commission de vérité et de réconciliation afin d’assurer la population que la lumière soit faite sur tous les massacres et tous les crimes commis, peu importe l’affiliation politique ou ethnique des responsables”, m’a-t-il dit jeudi 7 avril à Abidjan. “Je veux la réconciliation. Je vais former un gouvernement dans lequel toutes les régions et tous les groupes ethniques seront représentés.” Il a, depuis, rendu sa promesse publique.

Si la vérité sur les crimes commis depuis le début du conflit en septembre 2002 avait été établie, et si les auteurs des crimes avaient été tenus pour responsables et sanctionnés, la Côte d’Ivoire aurait peut-être pu éviter la situation à laquelle elle doit maintenant faire face.

Une commission d’enquête internationale avait pourtant été établie en 2004, mais son rapport n’a jamais été rendu public ni considéré par le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies. Espérons que les choses seront différentes cette fois-ci. Le Conseil de sécurité a déjà demandé au secrétaire général des Nations unies, M. Ban Ki-moon, de partager avec lui, ainsi qu’avec d’autres organisations internationales, le rapport de l’enquête indépendante qui sera présenté au Conseil des droits de l’homme à la mi-juin. Mais combien de personnes risquent encore de perdre la vie d’ici là ? Et pourra-t-on éviter d’autres représailles ?

Avec la prise de pouvoir effective du président Ouattara, après l’arrestation lundi de M. Gbagbo, il y a un regain d’espoir que le peuple ivoirien, qui souffre depuis longtemps, va enfin connaître la paix. Mais ce n’est pas une certitude. Le président Ouattara ainsi que les autres dirigeants politiques du pays doivent se lancer immédiatement sur le chemin sinueux mais nécessaire de l’assignation des responsabilités, tout en évitant une quelconque forme de représailles.

L’ancien président Gbagbo doit être traité avec dignité et, s’il est inculpé, jugé conformément aux normes internationales des droits de l’homme. Il ne faut pas faire de lui un bouc émissaire : tous les individus impliqués, peu importe leur affiliation politique, doivent faire face à la justice. L’établissement de la vérité ainsi que la mise en oeuvre de la justice sont des conditions préalables à la réconciliation et à une paix durable.

La Côte d’Ivoire est un pays riche, doté d’une infrastructure solide, majoritairement restée intacte. Mais elle aura besoin d’une aide substantielle venant de l’extérieur, tant sous la forme d’une aide humanitaire immédiate que d’une aide à plus long terme, afin de relancer son économie. Après les bouleversements en Afrique du Nord et le tremblement de terre au Japon, il faut espérer qu’elle continuera d’attirer l’attention de la communauté internationale.

“Si hubiera sabido entonces lo que sé ahora, el Informe Goldstone habría sido totalmente diferente”. Así comienza el juez Richard Goldstone su muy discutido artículo en el diario The Washington Post. Yo, por mi parte, estoy convencido de que si el redactor jefe hubiese valorado mejor ese texto la frase inicial hubiera sido algo así como: “Si llego a saber que este informe se utilizaría para tacharme a mí, precisamente a mí, de “judío que odia a los judíos”, no solo ante los ojos de mi adorado Israel, sino también ante los ojos de la comunidad judía sudafricana -que es la mía-, nunca hubiera redactado este informe”. Y si no fue esta la frase inicial del citado artículo sí es desde luego la que subyace en todo su texto.

Este vergonzoso giro de 180 grados no se produce de un día para otro. Llega después de año y medio de una intensa campaña de intimidación y desprestigio contra el juez, una campaña parecida a la que en el pasado destruyó la imagen de personajes tan poderosos como el senador estadounidense William Fullbrigt, lapidado por haberse atrevido a descubrir los ilegales manejos del lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) con el Estado de Israel.

En el mes de octubre de 2009, Goldstone ya adelantó a CNN que “amaba profundamente a Israel”, que “había trabajado en numerosas ocasiones por la causa israelí y que lo seguiría haciendo” (Vídeo Fareed Zakaria GPS, 4 de octubre de 2009).

Si pensamos que cuando realizó estas declaraciones no existían “nuevas evidencias” -como ahora dice que tiene- podríamos preguntarnos cómo es posible que ese amor suyo no se viera al menos debilitado por lo que fueron descubriendo -él y los demás miembros de la comisión de Naciones Unidas- a medida que redactaban el informe original.

Pero lo peor estaba por llegar. Hace exactamente un año, en abril del 2010, la campaña organizada contra su persona alcanzaba su punto más álgido. ¿O sería mejor decir el más bajo? Fue dirigida por el portavoz de la Federación Sionista Sudafricana, Avrom Krengel, que, entre otras cosas, intentó impedir la entrada de Goldstone en la ceremonia del Bar Mitzvah de su nieto con el pretexto de que Goldstone había “causado un daño irreparable al conjunto del pueblo judío”.

La Federación Sionista Sudafricana amenazó también con la formación de piquetes a las puertas de la sinagoga durante la celebración de la ceremonia. Aún peor fue la intervención del gran rabino de Sudáfrica, Warren Goldstein, que condenó a Goldstone por “el enorme daño causado al Estado de Israel”.

El pasado mes de febrero, Goldstone ya afirmó que “Hamás había cometido crímenes de guerra pero no Israel” en una entrevista, que no fue emitida, del Canal 2 de Israel. Seguía sin ser suficiente, los israelíes exigían mucho más.Los lectores se preguntarán: “¿Es que acaso el juez Goldstone no tuvo los suficientes arrestos para soportar la presión?”. Buena pregunta, pero ¡qué le vamos a hacer! La sionización de las comunidades judías y la identificación de lo judío con el sionismo posee un poderoso efecto disuasorio que impide que los judíos liberales se enfrenten abiertamente a Israel y sus crímenes.

De vez en cuando muchos judíos liberales parecen querer liberarse, permitir que sea su propia conciencia, en lugar de su miedo, la que dirija sus actos. Sin embargo, muchos de ellos parecen incapaces de persistir en sus buenas intenciones, al menos en lo que respecta al Estado de Israel. El riesgo de ser incluidos en el grupo de “los judíos que se odian a sí mismos” -con todo lo que esa inclusión trae consigo- es demasiado alto y costoso para ellos. Habría que encontrarse dentro de su piel para entender esta clase de terror.

Precisamente hace solo unas semanas, el departamento de espionaje militar israelí anunciaba que acababa de crear una unidad especial para identificar y perseguir a individuos y organizaciones sospechosas de “deslegitimar” a Israel en el extranjero. A la luz de estos hechos es probable que un buen número de corazones débiles asuman que los riesgos de enfrentarse a Israel no merecen la pena.

Deberíamos habernos dado cuenta de que el juez Goldstone pertenecía a este grupo cuando afirmó que, a pesar de las conclusiones de su informe, él seguía siendo sionista.

Este adjetivo, “sionista”, está mucho más cargado de significado de lo que normalmente se cree. Uno no puede decirse “sionista” si se opone a la ideología del apartheid que practica el Estado de Israel. Puedes, sí, seguir siéndolo si simplemente criticas al Estado de Israel por ciertos hechos criminales pero te niegas a ver la conexión entre dichos hechos y la ideología que subyace en los mismos. Decir “soy sionista” es una declaración de lealtad que de ninguna manera puede aceptar el Informe Goldstone del 2009. En pocas palabras, se puede ser sionista o, por el contrario, se puede acusar a Israel de crímenes de guerra y crímenes contra la humanidad, pero no las dos cosas a la vez.

Que este mea culpa no tiene nada que ver con la aportación de nuevos datos queda meridianamente claro cuando uno examina “las evidencias” mencionadas por Goldstone para justificar su retractación. Para ser del todo honesto debería decir que no se necesita ser un experto en Derecho Internacional para saber que Israel cometió crímenes de guerra en Gaza. Los informes de organizaciones como Breaking the Silence y representantes de Naciones Unidas sobre el terreno así lo prueban: el Informe de Goldstone no es la única evidencia.

Las fotografías e imágenes que vimos en nuestras pantallas y las que vimos también allí mismo demuestran la existencia de una política criminal dirigida a matar, mutilar y herir como castigo colectivo. “Los palestinos atraerán sobre sí mismos un nuevo Holocausto” prometió a los ciudadanos de Gaza Matan Vilnai, secretario del ministro de Defensa en febrero del 2008.

La única evidencia nueva que aporta Goldstone, es la existencia de una investigación interna puesta en marcha por el Ejército de Israel que dice que uno de los casos “sospechosos” de ser considerados crímenes de guerra fue debido a un “error” cometido por el Ejército y que está, todavía, siendo investigado. Este debe ser el as que guardaban en la manga: las muertes indiscriminadas de miles de palestinos fueron solo un “error”.

Desde el inicio del Estado de Israel, los cientos de miles de palestinos asesinados por Israel fueron siempre terroristas o “bajas por error”. ¿Así que de los 1.400 muertos de Gaza solo 29 lo fueron “por error”? Solo una posición fuertemente ideológica podría basar la elaboración del informe en una investigación interna del propio ejército que se concentra en solo uno de los muchísimos casos existentes de masacres y asesinatos ilegales. De ninguna manera puede decirse que hayan existido pruebas nuevas que impulsaran a Goldstone a reelaborar sus conclusiones. Es más bien su deseo de volver al confortable redil sionista lo que ha dado origen a su injustificable renuncia.

Algo que también queda claro si observamos la forma en que va subiendo de tono cuando se refiere a Hamás y lo baja cuando se dirige a Israel. Lo hace, seguramente, porque cree que así se librará de la justa cólera de Israel. Pero está equivocado, muy equivocado. No habían pasado sino unas pocas horas desde la publicación del artículo cuando Ehud Barak, ministro de Defensa de Israel, Netanyahu y, por supuesto, el premio Nobel de la Paz Simón Peres, encargaron a Goldstone una nueva tarea: a partir de ahora tendrá que dedicarse a hacer bolos de un campus universitario a otro en servicio del nuevo y piadoso Israel. También puede que diga que no, pero en ese caso volverán a negarle el acceso a la ceremonia del Bar Mitzvah de su nieto.