Prosecuting Heads of State

Since 1990, 67 former heads of state or government have been legitimately prosecuted for serious human rights or financial crimes. Many of these leaders were brought to trial in reasonably free and fair judicial processes, and some served time in prison as a result. This book explores the reasons for the meteoric rise in trials of senior leaders and the motivations, public dramas, and intrigues that accompanied efforts to bring them to justice. Drawing on an analysis of the 67 cases, the book examines the emergence of regional trends in Europe and Latin America and contains eight case studies of high-profile trials of former government leaders: Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Slobodan Milosevic (former Yugoslavia), Charles Taylor (Liberia and Sierra Leone), and Saddam Hussein (Iraq) – studies written by experts who closely followed their cases and their impacts on wider societies. This is the only book that examines the rise in the number of domestic and international trials globally and tells the tales in readable prose and with fascinating details.

Ellen L. Lutz is the Executive Director of Cultural Survival, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She previously directed the Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution and taught international human rights law, international criminal law, and other international law subjects at Tufts University's Fletcher School. From 1989 to 1994, she served as the California Director for Human Rights Watch and as HRW's principal researcher on Mexico. She has written widely on human rights and conflict resolution, international and transnational accountability for human rights violations, indigenous rights, and human rights in Latin America. Lutz received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1985) and her M.A. in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College (1978).

Caitlin Reiger, a recognized expert on international prosecutions, is Deputy Director of the Prosecutions Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice. From 2003 to 2005 she was the chamber's senior legal advisor to the judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2001 she co-founded and served as legal research coordinator of the Judicial System Monitoring Program in East Timor and later appeared as defense counsel before East Timor's Special Panels for Serious Crimes. Reiger has provided extensive policy advice and comparative research on national-international tribunals for serious human rights violations. Reiger manages ICTJ's Cambodia program and formerly managed the ICTJ's former Yugoslavia program. She received a BA in history and an LLB from the University of Melbourne (1996), and an LLM (in international law/human rights) from the London School of Economics (2003).