Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Del Ponte, Carla

[FEBRUARY 9, 1947–]

Swiss attorney, named as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals of the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Carla Del Ponte was born on February 9, 1947, in Lugano, Tessin, the sole Italian-speaking Swiss canton. After studying law in Bern and Geneva, Switzerland, she began her legal career in 1972, where she quickly gained a reputation as an independent and controversial figure. She worked closely with Judge Giovanni Falcone, who enlisted her aid in his campaign against Italian mafia crime bosses. With Falcone, she escaped an assassination attempt (by underworld figures) in 1989. (Falcone was later assassinated in 1992.) She was appointed attorney general in 1994 and spent the next several years prosecuting the presumed godfathers of the Russia mafia, drug traffickers, and money launderers.

Although a member of the Swiss Radical Party, which has close ties to Switzerland's business...