The Nicaraguan Contra, past dictatorships in Chile, Haiti, and Chad, and the Rwanda genocide have all been part of the successes and failures of this new member of GHREN, the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
HAVANA TIMES – It’s been over 40 years since Hungarian-American attorney Reed Brody, known as the “dictator hunter,” first began his international career as a human rights defender with an investigation in Nicaragua. As of last week, he’s been appointed by the United Nations to help investigate the crimes of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo against Nicaraguans’ fundamental freedoms.
Brody is known for having investigated the Nicaraguan counterrevolution (1980’s), as well as the Rwandan genocides, and for having brought the dictator of Chad, Hissee Habre, before the international justice system. In addition, he participated in the investigation and documentation of crimes committed by both Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti.
He served for 20 years as a legal consultant and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. He’s headed United Nations missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and El Salvador. He represented women exiled from Tibet in the UN conference in Beijing, and for several years now has been investigating the former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, who’s now exiled in Equatorial Guinea.
In the last assembly of the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2024, marking its 57th session, the Group of Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) warned that the human rights situation in Nicaragua has worsened drastically since 2023, and that the Ortega regime “has continued facilitating, coordinating and executing serious human rights violations and abuses.”
GHREN, a three-person commission, was set up by the Human Rights Council in 2022. Since that time, it has been led by German lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, an expert on criminality, security, and law, specializing in comparative criminal law, criminal politics, and international law. It also includes Uruguayan attorney Ariela Peralta, expert in international humanitarian law and human rights legislation.
Forty years after the investigation in which Brody detailed the “atrocities” committed by the Nicaragua Contra and assisted the Sandinista government by helping curtail US funding of the Contra, he will once again be turning his gaze on Nicaragua. This time, his investigation will focus on the crimes committed by the Ortega-Murillo regime since April 2018.
These are the past cases that Brody has investigated during his forty-year long career – cases that have earned him the title of “dictator hunter.”
Documenting Contra atrocities in Nicaragua
In 1984, while still serving as Assistant Attorney General of New York State, Brody traveled to Nicaragua to investigate the Sandinista revolution and the counterrevolution, or “Contra,” that was being heavily financed by then-president Ronald Reagan. His investigation was presented before the US Congress and later served as evidence in the case “
