Hague

In April 2011, former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, at the centre of a political crisis that followed disputed elections in the country five months earlier, was captured with French help by militiamen acting for his rival, Alassane Ouattara, the country’s current leader. A confidential French foreign ministry document obtained by Mediapart reveals how International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, without any legal basis, was involved in an operation to keep Gbagbo prisoner – five months before the ICC had even opened an investigation into his alleged crimes against humanity, for which he is now on trial in The Hague. Fanny Pigeaud reports on a covert operation in which the ICC appears to have played a key role France’s political manoeuvring in its former West African colony.

In 2010, the International Criminal Court began proceedings against six Kenyan officials, including the country’s current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, of crimes against humanity over their responsibility in the deaths of more than 1,100 people, the displacement of an estimated 350,000 others, and rapes and persecutions which followed contested presidential election results in late 2007. But, as revealed by confidential documents obtained by Mediapart and analysed together with its media partners in the European Investigative Collaborations consortium, the ICC cases fell apart due in large part to the weakness of the investigation led by chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo who, after bringing charges against Kenyatta, subsequently campaigned behind the scenes for the Kenyan leader to escape prosecution. Stéphanie Maupas reports.

In 2015 the former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court defended the interests of a billionaire businessman with links to the former Gaddafi regime and who was a supporter of potential war criminals in Libya. Luis Moreno Ocampo, who had left the ICC in The Hague just three years before, was paid a total of 750,000 dollars for his work, Mediapart and European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) can reveal in their 'The Secrets of the Court' investigation. Moreno Ocampo denies any wrongdoing and says he was simply advising the businessman, Hassan Tatanaki, to be cautious in his dealings with a faction involved in the Libyan civil war. Stéphanie Maupas and Hanneke Chin-A-Fo, from NRC Handelsblad in Holland, report.