The only surviving prosecutor from
the post-WWII Nuremberg trials on Tuesday defended the concept
of universal jurisdiction used to investigate human-rights
abuses around the world.
"Whether laws are written or not, there are crimes that
cannot be tolerated because they threaten all people, wherever
they might be," said Benjamin B. Ferencz, 94, in defence of the
universality principle by which the international military
tribunal established by the Allied forces after the Second World
War could try the most prominent military, political and
economic leaders from the Nazi era.
Universal jurisdiction must be protected against "political
and economic interests that claim to be above people," the
Hungarian-born American former prosecutor said.
Ferencz was speaking at the opening of the first
international conference on the subject, underway in Madrid,
following approval by the conservative majority People's Party
(PP) of Mariano Rajoy of a controversial reform limiting
cross-border justice in Spain by making it more difficult for
prosecutors to investigate crimes committed outside the
country's borders.
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