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.

Until last year, the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo was largely unknown in Kenya. He entered the national discourse when Justice Philip Waki wound up his inquiry into last year’s post-election violence.

Unlike other commissions, which only end up with a litany of recommendations, Justice Waki, while giving the government an opportunity to establish a local tribunal to try the suspects in Kenya, revealed the existence of the now famous secret envelope containing names of the key suspects.

In a move that jolted many politicians, the envelope was to be placed in the custody of former UN boss Kofi Annan – the architect of the peace deal that ended the post-election stalemate – who was to hand it over to the ICC prosecutor if the government failed to act within a given timeframe.

Instantly, Moreno Ocampo became a household name in Kenya. The possibility that this hitherto unknown man could hold the fate of big names contained in the Waki envelope was tantalising.

When Parliament scuttled the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill 2009 that would have established a local tribunal, it became increasingly clear that Mr Moreno would be going after the “bad boys”.

And now it has come to pass. When Mr Annan unexpectedly handed the envelope to the ICC on Thursday, he may have effectively put the careers of senior politicians in jeopardy.

Mr Moreno has the reputation of a fearless prosecutor who throws everything into the game once he is satisfied that the suspect has been involved in crimes against humanity.

Mass killings
In his native Argentina, he shot to fame when he prosecuted members of the 1976-83 military junta between 1984 and 1985. The trial brought to the dock nine senior commanders and three former heads of state who had presided over mass killings in Argentina.

The trials were triggered by a truth commission formed in 1984 which, in eight months, investigated 700 state-sanctioned murders, kidnappings and torture. By the time the trial – described as the biggest since Nuremburg – came to an end, five of the suspects had been prosecuted.

The distinction of the trial was the meticulous gathering of evidence by the prosecution which called more than 800 witnesses and presented thousands of documents in court.

The killings, torture and disappearances took place in Argentina in the 1970s in what is referred to as the “Dirty War”. Over this period, a host of military leaders took this South American nation through a murderous purge targeting anybody who expressed disquiet over dictatorship.

Mr Moreno’s thinking was greatly shaped by what he witnessed in Argentina as a young man in high school and later as a student at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied law.

When he was elected prosecutor for the ICC in April 2003, he gave a memorable speech in which he detailed his abhorrence for crimes against humanity and his determination to pursue perpetrators of genocide “to the end of the world”.

“I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future,” he declared.

In additional to serving as assistant prosecutor in the ground-breaking military junta trials, Mr Moreno led the effort to extradite former general Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason from the United States.