ICC
Sexual Abuse
2024 Echoes to
Ocampo and
UNSG Spox in
Inner City
Press
Exclusive
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee
[no longer] at the UN: Exclusive
UN GATE,
Oct 24, 2024 (see back to August
2008] -- The new abuse charges against
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, acknowledged
belatedly today by the Registrar as the start
of a cover-up, echo back to a prior ICC
prosecutor whom Inner City Press exclusively
reported on, before Antonio Guterres had it
thrown out of the UN:
As the UN
Security Council voted in the Spring of 2005
to refer the situation in Darfur to
International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis
Moreno-Ocampo, he was in Cape Town, South
Africa telling a female journalist she had to
come to his hotel room and have sex with him
in order to get her car keys back, according
to a rejected
complaint filed by then-close Ocampo
aide Christian Palme. Mr.
Palme attached to his complaint transcripts of
recordings surreptitiously made by him and, he
claims,
Ocampo's then-spokesman Yves Sorokobi, who is
now with the Office of the Spokesperson for
United Nations Secretary-General
At a July 17
press conference at UN Headquarters, Ocampo
was asked about the complaint, and a July 9
International Labor Organization ruling award
back pay and "moral damages" to Palme, for the
way he was fired. Ocampo called it a "human
resources" matter and Sorokobi, who was
moderating the press conference, told the
questioner to desist and called on the next
media organization in line, Inner City Press.
Inner
City Press exclusively obtained the complaint
on July 18, and asked Sorokobi to respond to
it. Sorokobi emphasizes that he did not
collaborate with Palme.
On that day, while
the Security Council debated a resolution to
refer to Ocampo the situation in Darfur for
investigation, Ocampo himself was in Cape
Town, South Africa.
Moreno-Ocampo and Ban
Ki-moon, tape recorders, car keys and
whistleblowers not shown
In summary as the complaint relates events,
Ocampo following an interview with a female
reporter from a South African newspaper took
the woman's
"car
keys and proceed[ed] to go to his hotel
suite... He refuses to return the keys
unless she consents to have sexual
intercourse with him. In
order to have her car keys returned to her,
[NAME] consents to have sexual intercourse
with Moreno-Ocampo... [NAME] leave the hotel
suite and immediately calls Sorokobi.. She
says 'something horrible happened.'"
Attached to
the complaint as Annex 3 is an email Sorokobi
purportedly
sent to Palme on March 29, 2005, that recounts
"some disturbing (LMO behavior) stuff from
[redacted] the [redacted] reporter who
interviewed him yesterday. Darryl has been
quite busy with lines on the possible Darfur
referral."
Contemporaneous
notes taken and submitted by Palme recounts
"working on the press release and the Q&A,
as usual without any support from Luis. We are
almost done with the Q&A, but Luis refuses
to approve it even for circulation within the
OTP. It seems he is trying to pretend as if
nothing is going on and he doesn't understand
that when the decision comes we will have
numerous calls with questions from media and
NGOs."
Readers will
make their own assessment of the credibility
of different parts of the complaint, which
Inner City Press is putting online here - and now?
For now,
click here
to view the "whistleblower" decision, which
Inner City Press obtained and is putting
online.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet
piece by this correspondent about Uganda's
Lord's Resistance Army. Click here
for an earlier Reuters
AlertNet piece about the Somali
National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's
$200,000 contribution from an undefined trust
fund. Video
Analysis
here
Feedback:
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Other, earlier Inner City Press are
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and some are available in the ProQuest service,
and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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