close
Friday March 29, 2024

Rulers and notables who were either tried or convicted in absentia

By Sabir Shah
July 07, 2018

LAHORE: Former Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif is not the first ruler on the planet to be convicted in absentia, research conducted by the "Jang Group" and "Geo Television Network" reveals.

Before Nawaz, many Presidents, Prime Ministers, dictators, ministers and family members of rulers have been tried in absentia, both within their own country and on international territories. By the way, as chronicles of history reveal, the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, were also charged by foreign courts in their absence. Nawaz Sharif, by the way, had appeared on 78 occasions during his trial, and had missed out 25 appearances in court, mainly due to his wife’s ailment. So, the former Pakistani Premier cannot actually say he was not heard by courts or was not given an ample chance to defend himself in graft allegations against him.

We all know that a few years ago, Pakistan’s two-time Premier Benazir Bhutto was convicted in absentia by an accountability court in Rawalpindi in April 1999. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail. Bhutto’s jailed husband, Asif Zardari, had received the same sentence.

Benazir’s loyalist, Aftab Sherpao, who later assumed charge as Pakistan’s Interior Minister during the General Musharraf-led regime, was also awarded a three-year sentence in absentia by an Accountability court when he was in London. On his return to Pakistan, he was arrested and sent to jail. He had later challenged the sentence on legal and constitutional grounds, and finally, it was reversed by the Peshawar High Court.

And then in 2003, Benazir Bhutto, her spouse and former President Asif Zardari and her late mother Nusrat Bhutto were convicted in absentia by a Swiss magistrate.

Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi were convicted in absentia on embezzlement and other charges in January 2011. They were sentenced to 35 years each in prison, and fined. President Ben Ali and his wife were fined nearly 91 million Dinars together.

According to the "CBS News," the conviction of the Tunisian ruler came after $27 million in jewels and public funds were found in one of his palaces. The couple had sought exile in Saudi Arabia during the throne-shaking uprisings in the Arab world. Ben Ali had called the proceedings a "shameful masquerade of the justice of the victorious."

Hussein Ali Al-Khafaji Al-Jaber (born 1948), the head of a brief puppet government in Kuwait during the initial stages of the 1990 Gulf War, was sentenced in absentia to death by hanging for treason in 1993. In January 2000, he had returned to Kuwait attempting to appeal the sentence. The court however, confirmed Ali guilty of treason again on May 3, 2000, but in March 2001, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Holding dual nationalities as an Iraqi and Kuwaiti, he was appointed head of a nine-member puppet government during the Saddam-led invasion.

President of Congo, Pascal Lissouba (born 1931), was put on trial in December 2001 (in absentia) and convicted to 30 years labour work for treason and corruption, as he was intending to return home for the 2002 elections. He was overthrown during the 1997 civil war. After being deposed, Lissouba had sought asylum in London, according to a BBC report of December 29, 2001.

Panama’s ex-ruler General Noriega was tried in absentia as well. He was accused of having participated in three homicides, according to a CNN report of December 12, 2011.

When Noriega had arrived in his home country, nearly 22 years after the American forces had forcibly removed him from office in December 1989.

Noriega had been in France since 2010, after languishing for two decades in an American prison. In 2010, a French court had sentenced Noriega to seven years in prison for laundering 2.3 million Euros through banks there. He was ordered to pay the money back. Noriega had denied the charges.

Noriega was also indicted in the United States on charges of racketeering, laundering drug money and drug trafficking. He was accused of having links to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s notorious cartel and was hence convicted of drug trafficking and other crimes in America.

In April 2010, a former Kyrgyz President, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was charged with mass murder and polygamy in absentia. He had fled to Belarus. He was stripped of Presidential immunity.

In January 2007, as an "Associated Press" report carried by "The Hindu" had stated, Ethiopia’s former President Mengistu Haile Mariam was sentenced to life in prison for killing thousands of people during his 17-year reign. He was tried in absentia for 12 years. Mariam had fled into exile in Zimbabwe.

A former Ethiopian Prime Minister Captain Fireselassie Wegderes, country’s former Vice President Colonel Fisseha Desta and former chief of internal security Colonel Teka Telu were also among the scores of once-powerful people tried for murdering compatriots.

In 2003, Vice Admiral Didier Ratsiraka (born 4 November 1936), President of Madagascar from 1975 to 1993 and from 1997 to 2002, was tried in his absence too. Ratsiraka, accused of stealing nearly eight million dollars in public funds, was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour. However, he was allowed to return from exile on November 24, 2011.

In 2010, some 10 years before he had assumed charge as Suriname’s President through a coup, Desi Bouterse, was charged in absentia of drug trafficking by a court in the Netherlands. He was accused of numerous human rights violations in the 1980s but was given immunity by the parliament in 2012.

A two-time French Prime Minister Pierre Laval (1883-1945) was arrested and tried for High Treason on orders from General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), who was then the President of a Provisional government and had led his country’s troops during World War II between 1940 and 1944. Prime Minister Pierre Laval had served as French premier during 1931-1932, and also during 1935-1936. Laval attended the first phase of his trial, but outbursts from the jury infuriated him, leading to heated exchanges between him and the adjudicators. Laval said he felt insulted and left the courtroom before he was formally indicted.

All three of his lawyers had also declined to be in court to hear the reading of the formal charges, contending the trial was motivated by political considerations. The court carried on without them. The trial continued without the accused, ending with Laval being sentenced to death. His lawyers were turned down when they requested a re-trial.

Though the French premier had attempted to take poison instead of getting executed on October 15, 1945, stomach pumping had somehow revived him to face the firing squad under directives from General Charles de Gaulle, who himself was tried in absentia by a French military court in August 1940 while he was heading the French forces. He was first sentenced to four years in prison and later sentenced to death. He was also deprived of his military rank, whereas his property was confiscated.

He had then ruled the French Republic as its first President between 1959 and 1969. It is a little out of context but while he was on the throne, Charles de Gaulle would pay for his own haircuts and the stamps for personal correspondence, and had an electricity meter installed in the private accommodation at his official residence.

In November 1998, a US federal grand jury had formally charged Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two American embassies in Africa, describing the Saudi exile as the leader of a nine-year conspiracy, reaching from the Philippines to New York, to kill Americans. Those bombings killed 213 people — including 12 Americans — in Nairobi, Kenya, and 11 people in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Thousands more were injured. Osama, of course, was charged in absentia.

Former President of Chad, Hissene Habre (born 13 September, 1942), was sentenced to death in his absence in August 2008, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. On June 30, 2013, Habre was arrested in Senegal and a Senegalese court had charged him with crimes against humanity and torture.

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson (born 1959), who is the former wife of Queen Elizabeth’s son Prince Andrew, was tried in Turkey in absentia during May 2012 for allegedly taking part in the secret filming of two orphanages in 2008. The Turkish government had accused the duchess of smearing Turkey’s image Egyptian physician and current al-Qaeda leader, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri (born 1951), was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 by an Egyptian military tribunal for killing 62 tourists.

Former Bolivian dictator, General Luis Garcia Meza Tejada, was tried and convicted in absentia for the serious human rights violations incurred by his regime. In 1995, he was extradited to Bolivia from Brazil and is still serving a 30 year prison sentence, in the same prison where he once kept his enemies.

In June 2011, Arafat Rahman Koko, the fugitive younger son of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, was sentenced to six years imprisonment by a special court for siphoning off over USD 2.66 million as bribes from two foreign companies, Messrs China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd and the German telecom giant Siemens’ subsidiary in Bangladesh.

According to NDTV, Koko was guilty of money laundering more than $2.66 million to Singapore. He was fined $5.13 million.

Koko, who has refused to return for trial and living in Bangkok, was arrested on September 2007 on graft charges under a massive anti-corruption campaign of the earlier interim government and was paroled for treatment abroad in July 2008.

During the 1945-46 Nuremberg War Trials, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s Secretary, Martin Bormann, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in his absence.

A former Iraqi oil minister, Ahmed Chalabi, was also convicted in absentia in Jordan for a bank fraud.