![]() ![]() ![]() At DePaul he inspires intense loyalty in many and grudging respect in others. Others say he’s an administrative strongman who simply does what he wants. Some people say Bassiouni succeeds because he has bottomless reserves of energy and personal charm. He’s known as a tireless and outspoken advocate for human rights and a diplomatic player whose role in international affairs has been described by various people as crucial, mysterious, or exaggerated. He has confronted Serbian warlords and UN bureaucrats, championed landless Palestinians and the mentally ill. He has advised heads of state on terrorism, international drug trafficking, and extradition. That might seem an odd role for a professor from a little law school, but Bassiouni knows top government officials all over the world–on the walls in and around his office are numerous photos showing him shaking hands with Earl Warren, Madeleine Albright, Hosni Mubarak. If a court is established Bassiouni is widely expected to play a leading role in it, as a judge, chief prosecutor, or president. “The only way to prevent them is to establish a permanent institution which removes from the political negotiator the ability to play the card of justice.” “Examples of impunity abound,” he said, stepping out from behind the lectern. Ultimately Bassiouni was hopeful, inspiring. He drew a collective gasp from the audience when he mentioned in passing the “little-known fact” that amnesty in Panama for Haitian military dictator Raoul Cedras was arranged on behalf of the Clinton administration by Manuel Noriega from his prison cell in Florida. It was the familiar litany of human horrors–vast, distant, and numbing–but Bassiouni kept throwing in shocking details. “It is almost as if we have gotten to the point where anything under 100,000 persons killed doesn’t even make the front pages.” He said that after the Holocaust the world declared “never again,” then failed to do anything about the millions murdered in Cambodia, Liberia, El Salvador, Uganda, Chile, Bangladesh. “Yet in no society in the world would one countenance the thought that you should reward a criminal for stopping the commission of a crime.”īassiouni, who also served as the UN’s chief war-crimes investigator in Bosnia, recounted a long list of halfhearted attempts and utter failures to prevent genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity or to punish those who commit them. And yet the record of the world community in dealing with these conflicts has not been a record of accountability and the pursuit of justice or redress for the victims.” In fact, he said, state-sponsored atrocities are routinely forgiven as the price of restoring peace. “In the 50 years since World War II,” his speech began, “we have had 250 conflicts that have produced 170 million casualties. But to hear Bassiouni tell it, the conference was an epic triumph that will change the world–and the realization of a quixotic dream he’s pursued his entire career. government kept throwing up roadblocks to the treaty–and remains one of the biggest obstacles to the creation of the court. The story wasn’t heavily covered by the American media, even though the U.S. Last summer Bassiouni, one of the world’s foremost experts on international law, was one of three chairmen at a UN conference in Rome, where 5,000 lawyers, diplomats, and activists from 148 countries struggled to put together an international treaty setting up the court. When Dean Teree Foster introduced him, she read congratulations sent by Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Jimmy Carter that emphasized the historic nature of his accomplishment. and Egypt, but for DePaul, where he’s taught for the last 34 years. It was a big moment not only for Bassiouni, a dual citizen of the U.S. A photographer roamed around snapping away for posterity. It was standing room only even before he made his entrance and worked his way to the podium, glad-handing friends, colleagues, and the delegation of Egyptian jurists that filled the first three rows. Early last semester an audience of students, faculty, lawyers, and judges packed into a lecture hall at DePaul University to hear him describe his role in digging the foundation for the world’s first permanent international criminal court, an independent judicial body that may one day try the world’s worst criminals. Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni is a hell of a storyteller. Now Playing: Chicago’s history in movie ads. ![]()
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