DIRECTOR´S NOTES

Collaborate in explaining the process of the protagonists in pursuit of justice and human rights is, as well as a privilege and a big responsibility, a great opportunity. For me, it’s an important task to help people understand the juridical language, given the historical isolation of the judicial power and its perverse use by the political and economic powers.

Democratize juridical language, cunderstand judicial mechanisms and point out their actors, all this with the support of a hundred of the most prestigious international jurists who have united to fight against impunity in major economic and environmental crimes, is a noble objective.

This documentary is about heroes, brave jurists, classical characters of film noir.

Carles Caparrós i Obiols, director.

“What we are doing here is seeking truth, knowing. It´s a bet for life”.

HUGO OMAR CAÑÓN

Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish judge and lawyer (1955). Investigating Magistrate of the Spain’s Central Criminal Court (Audiencia Nacional) between 1988 and 2012, where he was responsible for instructing cases on terrorism, drug trafficking, organised economic and financial crimes, as well as political corruption, extraditions, and crimes against humanity. From his Court, he ordered the detention of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity as well as for murder and torture of Spanish citizens during his mandate.

He has been an external consultant for the International Criminal Court in The Hague (2010-2011) and for the OEA’s Support Mission to Peace Process in Colombia (2011-2012). Coordinator of the International Oversight Committee for the judicial reform of Ecuador (2011-2013) and consultant for the Human Rights Commission from Argentina’s government (2012-2016), while he was President of the UNESCO International Centre for the Promotion of Human Rights in Argentina. He is currently head of Julian Assange’s legal team (founder of Wikileaks). In 2011 and 2012, he joined the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.

Baltasar Garzón chairs the FIBGAR Foundation, a non-profit pro-Human Rights and Universal Jurisdiction organisation based in Madrid, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. He is the author of ten books and various articles and papers. He received an Honorary Doctorate in 29 universities around the world and he is affiliated to various humanitarian organisations, human rights and conflict resolution centres, inside and outside of Spain.

Reed Brody

Reed Brody (1953) is an American human rights lawyer, counsellor and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. He specialises in helping victims pursue abusive leaders for atrocities, and has gained fame as the “Dictator Hunter”.

He worked as counsel for the victims in the case of the exiled former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré (who was convicted of crimes against humanity in Senegal) and has worked with the victims of Augusto Pinochet.

He led UN teams in charge of investigating the killings in The Democratic Republic of Congo and the compliance of human rights in El Salvador. He coordinated an international juridical team who took crimes against human rights to court in Haiti. He is former Executive Secretary of the International Commission of Jurists and New York State Assistant Attorney General. He wrote three reports regarding mistreatment of prisoners in the USA during the “War on Terror”.

Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Naomi Roht-Arriaza is an American attorney, Distinguished Professor at UC Hastings Law (San Francisco) and President of the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) since May 2013. She’s renowned at a global level for her expertise in transitional justice, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. She contributed to the defence of human rights through legal and social counselling, due to her extensive knowledge of and experience in post-conflict procedures in Latin America and Africa.

Throughout her lengthy career, Roht-Arrianza has worked on issues such as state violation of human rights, international penal right, reparations, environment and corporate responsibility.
Some of her noted publications include Impunidad y Derechos Humanos en el Derecho y la Práctica Internacional (1995) and El Efecto Pinochet: Justicia Transnacional en la Era de los Derechos Humanos (2005).

William Bourdon

William Bourdon (1956) is a French lawyer, founder and president of Sherpa, whose goal is to defend the victims of crimes committed by economic operators as well as victims of white-collar crime. He is an expert in freedom of speech and human rights, as well as defence of victims of globalisation and crimes against humanity. He is a member of the International Committee to Support Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange and of the New York Process (CIS).

He initiated the first French proceedings undertaken against individuals responsible for crimes against humanity, notably in Rwanda and Serbia. He also represents the Chilean-French victims of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

In Sénégal in 2000, Bourdon filed a criminal complaint and charged Hissène Habré with torture and crimes against humanity in the name of the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights). In December 2008, after the failure of complaints against Omar Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Sherpa and Transparency International filed a complaint against person unknown on the conditions under which a lot of movable and fixed assets were acquired in France by these African heads of state.

In 2014 he published “A Little Handbook of Civil Disobedience” about the legal framework for whistleblowing and the development of this emerging civic movement.

Polly Higgins

Polly Higgins (1968) is a Scottish lawyer, expert in the Law of Ecocide.

Her proposal is to expand the remit of the International Criminal Court to include Ecocide as an international crime (to stand alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression) and ensure global governance and protection against some of the most egregious crimes, namely State and corporate crime that causes or fails to prevent climate disasters as well as other ecological catastrophes.

She has been hailed as one of the World’s Top 10 Visionary Thinkers by the Ecologist and celebrated as The Planet’s Lawyer by the 2010 Change Awards. She is ranked as No.35 in Salt magazine’s 2016 Top 100 Inspiring Women of the world.

Founder of the Earth Law Alliance and Earth Community Trust, she has garnered a number of awards for her work advocating for a law of Ecocide. She received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Business School Lausanne 2013.

Her first book, Eradicating Ecocide, won the Peoples Book Prize in 2011.

Luis Moreno Ocampo

Luis Gabriel Moreno Ocampo (1952) is an Argentine lawyer. As former first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2003-2012), he led an investigation into abuses committed in Uganda, Sudan, DRC and Ivory Coast.

He previously worked as a prosecutor in Argentina, where he gained fame by representing the public face of the prosecution in the military officials in the Trial of the Juntas in 1985. This trial was the first since the Nuremberg Trials in which senior military commanders were prosecuted for mass killings.

He acted in the trial against two Chiefs of the Buenos Aires Police Force for grave crimes against humanity, including murders, kidnapping, and torture. In 1987 he assisted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the extradition process of General Guillermo Suarez Mason from California. He led a military malpractice case against the top Army commanders in the Malvinas-Falkland war and dozens of public corruption cases against Federal Judges, National Ministers, and Heads of public companies.

In 2016, he founded and is currently heading a niche global consulting firm focused on developing tailored strategies to manage complex conflicts with transnational dimensions.

He is a Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and a former member of the advisory board of Transparency International (as president of its Latin America and Caribbean office).

Dolores Delgado

Minister of Justice of Government of Spain from June, 2018 (Madrid, 1962).

Is a spokesperson of the public prosecutor’s office of Spain’s Central Criminal Court and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. She used to be an anti-drugs prosecutor specialised in prevention and repression of illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. She is part of the Union Progresista de Fiscales (progressive attorney association). In 2011 in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court, she helped write up an international warrant to prosecute the deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for alleged crimes against humanity.

In Spain, she was a pioneer in leading the fight for the application of Universal Jurisdiction. She was to first prosecutor to accuse the Argentine repressor Adolfo Scilingo of crimes against humanity, which led to his conviction in the case of the Madrid trials.

She wrote a large amount of articles and and essays about Universal Jurisdiction and Terrorism.