The Attorney General of Cape Verde has played and continues to play a crucial role in the arbitrary detention of H.E. Saab since June 12, 2020. Systematically denying all allegations of human rights violations, adopting a systematic posture of hostility displayed towards H.E. Saab, his fight goes far beyond that of his partisan opposition against the Venezuelan Special Envoy he is arbitrarily holding in his cells. The Attorney General of Cape Verde is not only in open conflict with Alex Saab, he is also radically and systematically opposed to all the values of human rights, the rule of law and democracy that are supposed to be the foundation of the State of Cape Verde since its independence.
Even if the Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors adopted in 1990 by the United Nations underline the essential role played by prosecutors in a state governed by the rule of law,
“as essential agents of the administration of justice”, supposed to
“maintain the honour and dignity of their profession”, recalling that they must be able to
“perform their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment”,
the role of the Attorney General of Cape Verde in the Saab case illustrates, on the contrary, perfectly the bad practices that a Prosecutor’s office can put in place and the consequences of these practices on human rights. To an objective outsider, the Prosecutor’s actions in this case are more akin to a filibuster or a buccaneer who has declared a quasi-personal war on Alex Saab.
The institutional position that the Attorney General occupies in the Saab case has allowed him for more than a year to deny H.E. Saab, on a quasi-systematic basis, the respect of any principle of loyalty, equity and honesty.
We find here the drifts of the filibuster’s strategy. The case, highly politicised, has been marred for more than a year by the worst formal defects inadmissible in a state governed by the rule of law, from the absence of an arrest warrant, to the nullity of the red notice, through the denial of consular rights, the non-respect of deadlines, procedural rights, hearings, the rights of the defense, and all applicable judicial guarantees.
Any prosecutor worthy of the title, in a state governed by the rule of law, would have already apologised to Alex Saab before requesting his immediate release. To do this, it would have been sufficient to apply the law of Cape Verde which, since the beginning of this case, has been flouted by the very person who is supposed to protect him.
But that is not all. The method of a Filibuster Prosecutor is not limited to denying the respect of the law of his own legal order. He goes to war against all the values that could counteract him in his plans to attack Alex Saab. It is in this sense that he opposes, with a cold rhetorical violence full of confusions and legal approximations, the application of the fundamental norms of human rights in this case.
This also explains the epidermal reaction against the ECOWAS Court of Justice’s ruling of March 15, 2021, that Alex Saab’s detention was arbitrary, and the radical opposition to the United Nations calling on Cape Verde to reason, and in particular to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which had simply requested provisional measures to ensure compliance with the obligations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, these human rights bodies were content to state the law, to invite respect for human rights, and nothing else.
In a state governed by the rule of law, a public prosecutor has the honour of being the guarantor and ally of human rights. Procedural fairness, and the values of justice and the protection of human rights are the supreme values that guide him in the exercise of prosecution.
On the other hand, a filibustering Prosecutor serves other interests, and sells out his loyalty, even if it means destroying, little by little, and even in the course of a particular case, the fundamental values on which a nation has been built.
In the case of Alex Saab, the interests that the Prosecutor seems to want to protect are neither those of the administration of justice, nor those of human rights, and even less those of the rule of law.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the interests of the United States of America are extremely well protected thanks to the filibuster approach of the case, so much so that one may wonder about the true face of the mastermind of the judicial saga concerning Alex Saab.
