2023-12-28 20:34:55
Former radical MP and Attorney General of Ticino Dick Marty died on Thursday at the age of 78. The man who was also rapporteur at the Council of Europe and member of the OSCE Commission on Human Rights had acquired international notoriety.
The death of Mr. Marty, who devoted a good part of his career to fighting mafia systems and defending freedoms, was confirmed by the Swiss PLR at Keystone-ATS.
Born in 1945 in Lugano, Dick Marty was prosecutor of Ticino from 1975 to 1989 then state councilor, before serving for sixteen years on the Council of States, from 1995 to 2011. It was during this period that he was delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, since 1998.
There he became known as a special investigator into the highly contested CIA prisoner transports and secret American prisons in Europe.
Death threats and high surveillance
This former great figure in Swiss politics and justice has long lived under maximum police surveillance, since the end of 2020. The Confederation had been alerted that the Serbian intelligence services had sought to assassinate Mr. Marty.
“The Serbian services asked the underworld to liquidate me, quite simply to put the blame on the Kosovars,” he confided in the spring of 2022.
Because the name Dick Marty has also been closely associated with Kosovo. In 2010, as special rapporteur of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the Ticino denounced organ trafficking carried out since 1999 by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
His denunciations of war crimes by Kosovar militias once morest Serbia led to the indictment in 2020, before the Special Court in The Hague on Kosovo, of former Kosovar president Hashim Thaci.
On a national level, Dick Marty also became known for his presidency of the late Inter-Jura Assembly from 2011 to 2017, in the context of the Jura conflict. He was also president of Suisse Tourisme for almost ten years (1996-2007) and chaired the Council of the University of Neuchâtel for three years, from 2010.
Alongside his political career and defender of major causes, such as the fight once morest torture but also once morest doping in cycling, Dick Marty worked part-time as an advisor in law and economics.
Tall man
In a strong tribute, the Ticino PLR regrets the death of a personality “of the highest caliber”. Dick Marty, writes the party, “leaves an unfillable void in the political and social landscape of Ticino”. Beyond that, the man “had managed over the years to gain respect and consideration at the national and international level”.
During his investigations at the Council of Europe, Mr. Marty profiled himself as an ardent defender of human rights, recalls the Ticino PLR. He took risks, “which he always faced with courage and following his principles and his institutional duty”.
Not always perfectly in line with his party, Mr. Marty has always remained faithful to his values, with the defense of the individual and freedoms at the heart of his action, adds the party. Who concludes by highlighting his charisma and his depth of thought, with “his voice which inspired respect”.
“Democratic crisis”
In an interview published at the beginning of December in La Liberté and Le Courrier, Dick Marty, often a keen observer, estimated that “democracy in Switzerland was going through its most significant crisis since the last century. We are witnessing a shift in power towards the executive , to the detriment of the legislature and the judiciary”, he lamented.
Mr. Marty cited the example of contracts worth billions of francs for anti-Covid vaccines. “No information on the subject has been made public. However, one of the cardinal principles of democracy is precisely transparency,” he noted, also criticizing “the Federal Council’s use of the right of exception” .
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