Chuck Sudetic Bücher

Relates the billionaire's philanthropic efforts, including the $7 billion he has given away through his Open Society Institute.

Carla Del Ponte won international recognition as Switzerland's attorney general when she pursued cases against the Sicilian mafia. In 1999, she answered the United Nations' call to become the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. In her new role, Del Ponte confronted genocide and crimes against humanity head-on, struggling to bring to justice the highest-ranking individuals responsible for massive acts of violence in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo.These tribunals have been unprecedented. They operate along the edge of the divide between national sovereignty and international responsibility, in the gray zone between the judicial and the political, a largely unexplored realm for prosecutors and judges. It is a realm whose native inhabitants–political leaders and diplomats, soldiers and spies–assume that they can commit the big crime without being held culpable. It is a realm crisscrossed by what Del Ponte calls the muro di gomma –"the wall of rubber"– a metaphor referring to the tactics government officials use to hide their unwillingness to confront the culture of impunity that has allowed persons responsible for acts of unspeakable, wholesale violence to escape accountability. Madame Prosecutor is Del Ponte's courageous and startling memoir of her eight years spent striving to serve justice.

Ninguna mujer a lo largo de la historia ha perseguido a tantos criminales de guerra como Carla del Ponte. Su carrera como fiscal alcanzó eco internacional cuando actuó contra la mafia siciliana y el blanqueo de dinero negro en Suiza, y posteriormente como acusadora de los peores criminales de guerra de las últimas décadas, en Ruanda, en Bosnia, en Croacia y en Kosovo. En estas apasionadas y documentadas memorias sobre sus años como Fiscal Jefe del Tribunal Penal Internacional para Ruanda y del Tribunal Penal Internacional para la ex Yugoslavia, la autora nos desvela las interioridades de su lucha contra la impunidad de los criminales de guerra responsables de genocidios, ejecuciones en masa, violaciones y deportaciones. Sin callar nada, sin eludir la polémica, con la valentía de quien ha descendido a los infiernos, Carla del Ponte explica su lucha contra la impunidad de los peores genocidas, incluidos Slovodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic y Ratko Mladic, acusados de la matanza de Sebrenica en 1995. El imprescindible testimonio de una mujer valiente. Una luchadora por la justicia y contra la impunidad de los genocidas.