This man Moreno Ocampo

• The suspects on the list handed to the ICC prosecutor have reason to be afraid, as he has the reputation of a fearless warrior.

He also led the prosecution and investigations into two military rebellions in Argentina in addition to helping put away two army commanders accused of various crimes during the ws in the Falkland Islands.

As prosecutor, Mr Moreno was the bane of corrupt prominent individuals, both inside and outside government.

“The junta trials completely changed my life because at that point I was more involved on the academic side of the law, and I learned everything was different in reality. The criminals were the authorities. The police were committing the crimes,” he told the UN News Centre earlier this year. “In fact, most citizens, including my own mother, were supporting the criminals. They thought that the junta had been protecting them from the guerrillas. ”

The crimes
He led a group of young lawyers who conducted the investigation because, as he puts it, they could not rely on the police to run the investigation since they had been involved in the crimes.

“Before the trial began we had the truth commission – one of the first in the world, before Chile and before South Africa. The commission identified 3,000 victims. We selected some of them.

We looked for witnesses and documents proving abduction and then we proved torture of some of them and we proved the killing of some of them.

“The first case was against some of the top commanders of the junta, including the former president, so we started right at the top,” he said. He said the most interesting lesson he learnt was that the trial educated the entire population.

“In fact, my mother called me two weeks after the trial started and said ‘you were right, I was wrong. I still love General [Jorge Rafael] Videla but he has to be in jail’.”

In 1992, Mr Moreno resigned as Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires and established a private law firm, Moreno Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specialises in corruption control programmes for large firms and organisations, criminal and human rights law.

Until his election as prosecutor of the ICC, Mr Moreno worked as a lawyer and as private inspector general for large companies.

Freedom of expression
He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others, as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists’ protection and freedom of expression.

Mr Moreno also worked with various local, regional and international NGOs. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean.

He served on the global advisory board and the board of Transparency International, a worldwide organisation whose aim is to reduce corruption in business transactions.

The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr Moreno also served as a member of the advisory board of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition and New Tactics on Human Rights.

Before taking up the ICC job, Mr Moreno Ocampo had been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.