Carla Del Ponte

Carla Del Ponte (born February 9, 1947 in Bignasco, Switzerland) is a former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals. A former Swiss attorney general, she was appointed prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in August 1999, replacing Louise Arbour.

In 2003, the U.N. Security Council removed Del Ponte as the Prosecutor for the ICTR, and replaced her there with Hassan Bubacar Jallow in an effort to expedite proceedings in that Tribunal. She remained the Prosecutor for the ICTY until 1 January 2008, when she was succeeded by Serge Brammertz. Del Ponte was formerly married, and has one son.

She conducted an investigation on the allegations of organ trafficking by the KLA of Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo and Albania for the Parliament of Europe.

Del Ponte is currently the Swiss ambassador to Argentina.

Early life and education
Del Ponte was born in Lugano, Switzerland in 1947. She speaks fluent Italian, German, French and English. Del Ponte studied law in Bern and Geneva, as well as in Britain. She obtained her LL.M. in 1972.

After completing her studies, Del Ponte joined a private law firm in Lugano, leaving in 1975 to set up her own practice.

Prosecutor at the Lugano district
In 1981 she was appointed an investigating magistrate, and later public prosecutor at the Lugano district attorney's office. As public prosecutor, Del Ponte dealt with cases of money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, terrorism and espionage, often looking into the many international links forged in Switzerland's role as a global business centre.

It was during that period that she and Investigative Judge Giovanni Falcone uncovered the link between Swiss money launderers and the Italian drug trade in the so-called "pizza connection." Judge Falcone was killed by a large Mafia bomb. Del Ponte was more fortunate as the half a tonne of explosives planted in the foundations of her Palermo home were discovered in time for her to escape the attempted assassination unhurt. Falcone's death nurtured Del Ponte's resoluteness to fight organised crime. Her enemies in the Cosa Nostra call her "La Puttana" ("the whore"). She therefore became the first public figure in Switzerland to require round-the-clock protection and armour-plated car.

Career at the ICTY
After serving for five years as Switzerland's attorney general, in 1999 Del Ponte joined the ICTY and ICTR to deal with war crimes as prosecutor. In an interview in late 2001 about war crimes committed during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, Del Ponte said: "Justice for the victims and the survivors requires a comprehensive effort at international and national level."

On January 30, 2007 Del Ponte announced her intention to resign as Chief Prosecutor at the ICTY at the end of the year, stating it was "time to return to normal life." She was succeeded by Serge Brammertz on January 1, 2008.

She has been nominated as Switzerland's Ambassador to Argentina from January 2008.

In 2005, she accused the Vatican of helping Croatia's most wanted war crimes suspect evade capture.

NATO
In late December 1999, in an interview with The Observer in London, Del Ponte was asked if she was prepared to press criminal charges against NATO personnel for alleged war crimes in Kosovo by NATO pilots and their commanders. She replied "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right place. I must give up my mission".

This was followed by various negative official responses, military and civilian, from the US and Canada. Del Ponte's office subsequently issued a statement, dated four days later: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo".

Organ smuggling accusations
In 2008, Del Ponte published a book "The Hunt" in which she collected rather extensive evidence that the Kosovo Albanians were smuggling human organs of kidnapped Serbs after the Kosovo war ended in 1999. Her book created an international controversy.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had said of Del Ponte's allegations: "The Tribunal is aware of very serious allegations of human organ trafficking raised by the former Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, in a book recently published in Italian under her name. No evidence in support of such allegations was ever brought before the Tribunal’s judges."

On 4 April 2008 the Human Rights Watch wrote to Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha in request to open investigations on the matter under international supervision. By 3 May both had ignored the letters and instead publicly rejected del Ponte's claims as unsubstantiated. On 5 May 2008 the Human Rights Watch called the allegations from Del Ponte's book "serious and credible" and issued a public call to Tirana and Pristina for cooperation.

The reported alleges the victims were more than 400 Serbs missing from the war. "Serious and credible allegations have emerged about horrible abuses in Kosovo and Albania after the war," said Fred Abrahams, HWR Senior emergencies researcher of HRW.

According to the journalists’ information, the abducted individuals were held in warehouses and other buildings, including facilities in Kukes and Tropoje. In comparison to other captives, some of the sources said, some of the younger, healthier detainees were fed, examined by doctors, and never beaten. These abducted individuals – an unknown number – were allegedly transferred to a yellow house in or around the Albanian town of Burrel, where doctors extracted the captives’ internal organs. These organs were then transported out of Albania via the airport near the capital Tirana. Most of the alleged victims were Serbs who went missing after the arrival of UN and NATO forces in Kosovo. But other captives were women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia, and other Slavic countries.

United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo's published official forensic report from 2004 also confirms Del Ponte's allegations.

In 2008 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe authorized Carla Del Ponte to lead a formal investigation and employed a watcher to report her findings to the Parliament.