Dick Marty: A Magistrate Loaned To Politics

12/29/2023 2:12:57 PM

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) To review all the positions held, all the investigations conducted and offices held by Dick Marty, is a difficult task. Marty died last week Thursday at the age of 78. His passing was a result of an illness, which was made public in his final interviews and in the book Verità irriverenti. Riflessioni di un magistrato sotto scorta (Irreverent Truths: Reflections of a Magistrate under Protection) published by Edizioni Casagrande.

A magistrate and politician - indeed, "a magistrate on loan to politics" as the former public prosecutor of canton Ticino Piergiorgio Mordasini referred to him - Marty was certainly one of the most prominent Ticino personalities in recent decades. There is, however, a common thread that runs through his accomplished life: he was a staunch defender of human rights. He spent his life in pursuit of truth and justice. The latter being an indispensable condition of democracy, as he recalled in an interview a few months ago,“When it comes to human rights, to justice, you can have all the agendas you want but the priority is always justice. This is my choice and on this I do not want to yield”.

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Marty was born in Sorengo, a municipality in the district of Lugano in canton Ticino, on January 7, 1945. His father's family originated from the Valais. After completing school in Lugano, he studied law in Neuchâtel and obtained his licence in 1969. He obtained his doctorate in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1974 with an award-winning thesis on the role of the judge in the application of criminal sanctions. After a few years at the Max-Planck-Institut, he left academics for a career in law, first working in the judiciary in his home canton of Ticino. There he was a deputy public prosecutor and then public prosecutor from 1978 to 1989.

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Those were the years of major investigations against organised crime and drug trafficking, culminating in the most important seizure of heroin and morphine base in Swiss history. A truck carrying 100 kilos of narcotics was intercepted in Bellinzona, in canton Ticino, where the trafficker, Haci Mirza, was arrested.

The investigations earned Marty, together with Commissioner Fausto Cattaneo, the 'Award of Honour' from the US Department of Justice and the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association in 1987.

In July 1988 Marty then had the brothers Jean and Barkev Magharian arrested on suspicion of laundering drug proceeds. On the fringes of the 'Lebanon Connection' investigation, the name Shakarchi Trading appeared. Hans Kopp, a Swiss lawyer and media expert who was married to federal councillor Elizabeth Hopp, sat on the board of this company.

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A few months later, Elisabeth Kopp resigned from her position. But this accusation cost Hopp her political career. She admitted that she had warned him and was forced to resign from the Federal Council on January 12, 1989.

A result of the attention his work as a public prosecutor garnered, Marty was proclaimed 'Swiss Man of the Year' by the viewers of TSR, French-speaking Swiss television in 1989.

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Marty's investigations are recounted in the book 'Una certa idea di giustizia' ('A Certain Idea of Justice') published in 2020 with a foreword by former Turin prosecutor Armando Spataro. The book discusses investigations conducted during his time as a public prosecutor, but also those conducted after he became a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1998.

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The Council of Europe awarded Marty the Pro Merito prize on December 1, 2023, just 27 days before his death for his two reports presented in 2006 and 2007 on a 'global spider's web' of CIA detentions and secret transfers as part of the fight against terrorism. The report included the probable collusion of 14 Council of Europe member states. It did not spare Switzerland, which allegedly tolerated the use of its airspace for prisoner transfer flights.

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