Documents leaked from within the International Criminal Court (ICC) have shown how its chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, was not shy about seeking the help of the rich and famous in his work to hunt down war criminals around the world.
The disclosures, part of a haul of 40,000 documents obtained by the French investigative website Madiapart and seen by The Sunday Times, reveal his contact with the Hollywood stars George Clooney and Sean Penn, as well as the wife of the founder of eBay.
Moreno Ocampo asked Clooney, the co-founder of a project that used commercial satellites to fly over South Sudan gathering evidence of war crimes, for help investigating atrocities committed by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in Libya during the 2011 civil war.
The prosecutor requested that Clooney train his satellite on Libya “to put pressure on Gadaffi generals”. But the actor said the satellite was not yet “sophisticated enough”.
Moreno Ocampo was also in frequent contact with Pamela Omidyar, wife of the eBay founder, Pierre. The ICC is examining whether his conversations with Omidyar, which disclosed the views of two African heads of state on the arrest of a Congolese warlord, were a breach of his duty of confidentiality.
Moreno Ocampo invited Penn to a UN security council meeting on Sudan. While making plans to meet in a New York hotel, Moreno Ocampo mentioned he was deciding whether to launch an investigation in the Palestinian territories.
Penn replied: “While you make the decision on Palestine, I’m embroiled in a decision of weather [sic] or not to go to get a steam in the hotel spa. Which is to say . . . I am very flexible today and tonight.”
Clooney and Omidyar did not respond to questions last week.
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Top Photo: Clooney co-founded a project to track war crimes in South Sudan
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