Trump nominee for Inter-American Commission on Human Rights board rejected [View all]

[sandensea]

The Organization of American States (OAS) met in Cancún this week to elect new commissioners for the IACHR - the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - for the 2018-2021 period.

The OAS elected the candidates proposed by Mexico, Brazil, and Chile - but rejected, among others, the Trump administration's nominee, Notre Dame Human Rights Law Professor Douglass Cassel.

Cassel, 70, had admitted in 2015 to receiving payment from the Houston-based oil giant Chevron to publicly attack Ecuadorian villagers and their lawyers after they won a historic $10 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador in 2013 for deliberately discharging billions of gallons of toxic waste into the country’s rain forest.

Professor Cassel was criticized by representatives for Amazon communities for being an example of “corruption in academia” and for violating Notre Dame’s conflict of interest policy by not being transparent about his financial relationship with Chevron.

“It is pretty clear that Cassel is allowing himself to play a central role in a classic oil industry subterfuge,” Ecuadorian lawyer Julio Prieto said. “Since the corporation (Chevron) that dumped billions of gallons of oil waste into the rain forest has no credibility, it tries to enlist a third party academic to launder its agitprop."

Also rejected was Argentine President Mauricio Macri's nominee, Carlos de Casas.

De Casas, 62, served as defense attorney for retired Lt. Col. Enrique Gómez Saa, in a case of multiple kidnappings and torture committed during Argentina's brutal last dictatorship in the late 1970s.

"The nominee lacks any experience in the defense of Human Rights," Argentina's leading human rights organizations pointed out in a joint open letter. "Indeed, his only role was as defense attorney for one of those accused of perpetrating abuses."

De Casas succeeded in having Gómez Saa found mentally unfit to stand trial in 2015 based on a report prepared by Gómez Saa's own son-in-law.

Critics pointed out as well that de Casas' law career has been largely spent defending corporate clients against fraud charges.

Perhaps the most infamous was that of the Peirano Basso brothers, whom de Casas defended from extradition proceedings after the collapse of Banco Velox in 2002. The three brothers, who transferred $800 million from Velox to a Cayman Islands offshore bank, were later extradited and convicted of aggravated fraud.

Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups had opposed the nomination. De Casas was, moreover, the only candidate rejected by the IACHR as "unsuitable."

The elected IACHR representatives were Joel Hernández García (Mexico); with 28 votes; Flávia Cristina Piovesan (Brazil), with 21; and Antonia Urrejola Noguera (Chile), with 19. Cassel and de Casas obtained 16 and 11 votes, respectively.

They will replace James L. Cavallaro (USA), José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez (Mexico), and Paulo Vannuchi (Brazil).

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