Reed Brody, the “Dictator Hunter,” Focuses on Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan Contra, past dictatorships in Chile, Haiti, and Chad, and the Rwanda genocide have all been part of the successes and failures of this new member of GHREN, the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
HAVANA TIMES – It’s been over 40 years since Hungarian-American attorney Reed Brody, known as the “dictator hunter,” first began his international career as a human rights defender with an investigation in Nicaragua. As of last week, he’s been appointed by the United Nations to help investigate the crimes of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against Nicaraguans’ fundamental freedoms.
Brody is known for having investigated the Nicaraguan counterrevolution (1980’s), as well as the Rwandan genocides, and for having brought the dictator of Chad, Hissee Habre, before the international justice system. In addition, he participated in the investigation and documentation of crimes committed by both Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti.
He served for 20 years as a legal consultant and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. He’s headed United Nations missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and El Salvador. He represented women exiled from Tibet in the UN conference in Beijing, and for several years now has been investigating the former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, who’s now exiled in Equatorial Guinea.
In the last assembly of the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2024, marking its 57th session, the Group of Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) warned that the human rights situation in Nicaragua has worsened drastically since 2023, and that the Ortega regime “has continued facilitating, coordinating and executing serious human rights violations and abuses.”
GHREN, a three-person commission, was set up by the Human Rights Council in 2022. Since that time, it has been led by German lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, an expert on criminality, security, and law, specializing in comparative criminal law, criminal politics, and international law. It also includes Uruguayan attorney Ariela Peralta, expert in international humanitarian law and human rights legislation.
Forty years after the investigation in which Brody detailed the “atrocities” committed by the Nicaragua Contra and assisted the Sandinista government by helping curtail US funding of the Contra, he will once again be turning his gaze on Nicaragua. This time, his investigation will focus on the crimes committed by the Ortega-Murillo regime since April 2018.
These are the past cases that Brody has investigated during his forty-year long career – cases that have earned him the title of “dictator hunter.”
Documenting Contra atrocities in Nicaragua
In 1984, while still serving as Assistant Attorney General of New York State, Brody traveled to Nicaragua to investigate the Sandinista revolution and the counterrevolution, or “Contra,” that was being heavily financed by then-president Ronald Reagan. His investigation was presented before the US Congress and later served as evidence in the case “Nicaragua vs. the United States” in the International Court of Justice, regarding military and paramilitary activities in the country. That’s how his journey along the road of human rights began.
Nicaragua had charged the United States government before the International Court of Justice of supporting the counterrevolution. The report that Brody compiled in Nicaragua was introduced as evidence in the case. On June 27, 1986, the Court at The Hague ruled that the United States must compensate Nicaragua for damages caused by the “military and paramilitary” activities it promoted to destabilize the then Sandinista Revolutionary government. Years later, the Nicaraguan government pardoned the US debt.
“I knew a US priest who let me speak with survivors and victims of the Contra – the anti-Sandinista guerrilla financed by the government of Ronald Reagan. I later returned to spend four more months in Nicaragua and wrote a report [“Contra terror in Nicaragua”] that ended up on the cover of the New York Times and was eventually presented to Congress. That was key to [temporarily] halting US aid to the group,” Brody commented in an interview he gave Diario.es in February 2024.
His commitment was so great that he left his post as New York’s Assistant Attorney General to focus on Nicaragua. “I took on the rights of consumers, I brought companies to trial; cases of Hispanic families who had sent their belongings to their countries with no guarantees when they were lost, as sometimes happened. I loved the work because I felt like Santa Claus, acting in the name of the government against large companies, and passing out gifts to the people,” Brody stated in a 2021 interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
Brody played a part in the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in 1998. The Chilean general was taken into custody in London, following an arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon. The occurrence unleashed a political storm in Chile and contributed to a change in how international criminal law was applied in the world.
From his post at Human Rights Watch, Brody coordinated the work in the Chamber of Lords in London. “When they determined that Pinochet didn’t enjoy immunity, and could be arrested and extradited anywhere in the world, despite being a former Head of State, we saw that we had an arm, a new instrument of international law to bring to justice people who had seemingly been out of its reach,” the human rights attorney told the online news site Diario.es.
Pinochet’s arrest represented a change in the application and interpretation of international human rights law. It reaffirmed fundamental principles such as the scope of universal jurisdiction and the absence of immunity for former heads of state accused of crimes such as torture and crimes against humanity.
Following a long legal battle, Pinochet was freed on March 2, 2000, by order of Jack Straw, then British Home Secretary, considering that the General wasn’t in condition to face trial, due to his health.
Guilty verdict for former Chad dictator Hissene Habre
One of Brody’s most notable collaborations resulted in the 2013 trial of Hissene Habre, who ruled Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990. In 2016, Habre was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture, by an international tribunal in Senegal.
Twenty-six years after the crimes that occurred during his time in power, the former dictator was sentenced to life in prison. The trial of Habre is considered a historic process, because it was the first time that a former head of state was tried in the court of another nation. It was also the first time that an African tribunal utilized the principle of universal jurisdiction – the legal authority of tribunals of any country to prosecute grave human rights violations committed outside their borders.
At that time, Brady declared that the trial demonstrated: “that with tenacity and perseverance, victims and activists can create the political conditions to bring their dictator to justice.”
Legal actions against Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier
In 2011, Brody headed the investigation and documentation of the crimes committed by Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, whose regime – which lasted from 1971 to 1986 – was characterized by systematic human rights violations.
Duvalier returned to Haiti on January 16, 2011, following nearly 25 years in exile. Once there, he was accused of a number of financial crimes and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, the trial that had been billed as “the most important penal case in the history of Haiti” never progressed, and the dictator died in 2014 without ever facing justice.
Investigations of the Rwanda genocides
Among his negative experiences, Brody has mentioned his investigation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he’d been sent by Kofi Annan, at that time UN Secretary General.
“In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, he appointed me to investigate the massacres perpetrated against the Hutus who had taken refuge in the Congo. However, our report was buried, and 23 years later, the country is still racked by the same cycle of atrocities and impunity. If you change the dates, it’s the same; the events are the same,” Brody told El Pais in 2021.
On the path of Gambia’s dictator Yahya Jammeh
In February 2024, Brody noted that he’s still going after Yahya Jammeh, the dictator who oppressed Gambia from 1994 to 2016, later taking exile in Equatorial Guinea. During his 22 years of government, Gambians suffered death squad massacres, extra-judicial executions, human rights violations, and forced disappearances. Journalists and the opposition were silenced.
Jammeth went so far as to withdraw his country from the Commonwealth of Nations and began the process of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court at the same time that he declared the nation an Islamic republic. All three decisions were later rescinded by the successor government.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.