Eloquent and resolute, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, retains at 85 the passion and determination to continue the work that has defined her life: the defense of human rights.

Born in South Africa, she grew up under the apartheid regime and became a lawyer because she wanted to know “what people’s rights are.” The Norwegian Nobel Committee highlighted her efforts to uphold international law at a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), face attacks from the United States and its main ally, Israel.

Pillay has worked at both institutions, but the strongest backlash from Washington and the Israeli government came after she concluded in 2025 that the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is committing genocide in Gaza.

Another pivotal moment in her career came in 1998, when, as a judge at the then International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she sat on the bench that ruled that rape and systematic sexual violence constituted an integral component of the crime of genocide.

With her schedule packed with trips and engagements since receiving the prize, she speaks to EL PAÍS by video call and admits that “it’s just sinking in.”

Question. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that “peace requires justice” when it announced that you had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 9. Hours later, the United States imposed financial and trade sanctions on the ICC. What is the greatest threat to the international rule of law today?

Answer. The resort to force is clearly the greatest threat to the international rule of law. And when powerful states take up that view and then get collaboration from other powerful people and states. These are all risks when, really, the rest of the world — that is, the majority of people — want peace and they want justice as the route to achieving it. They do not want more wars and more deaths. Because civilians are the ones who lose their lives most in modern warfare and remote armed drones. States have a peremptory obligation to protect civilians and to prevent crimes such as genocide. And we have to uphold those basic principles even in civil society. NGOs take great risks in going on the street to assert that.

Q. In 2025, as chair of a U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry, you concluded that there were reasonable grounds to say that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. You came under fierce criticism from both Israel and the United States. Are you confident in the evidence your commission gathered? Why do you believe this amounts to genocide, the gravest of crimes and the one that is often considered the hardest to prove?

A. We analyzed both the Hamas attacks and Israel’s reaction, and we did it just like a court of law would. We did not put in a single piece of evidence in our report that we did not personally verify. Each department did its own investigation, and then we compiled all that together. Thanks to my previous experience in investigating genocide in Rwanda as a judge [in 100 days in 1994, between 500,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by the Hutu government and local militias], and based on the evidence of acts against the population in Gaza, together with statements made by leaders, genocidal intent by the government can be inferred. But we named three individuals: President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, as individuals who should be investigated and tried for genocide.

Q. Israel and the United States flatly reject your conclusions. Do you think the response from other democratic countries has been strong enough?

A. When we made the report, we exposed ourselves to criticism for concluding that there had been genocide in Gaza. I would change some parts of the text if it could be shown that certain things did not happen. But that is not the criticism we’re getting. We have been met with very serious and violent insults from Israel and the U.S., who call me a liar. That’s not so. The report seeks action by courts, whether national or the ICC, and it is significant that only these two countries have launched personal accusations without addressing the substance of the work. The Nobel Committee highlighted my work in respect of this conflict and this report. That vindicates our work and gives us a clear idea as to where the world is headed. We are not looking for another world war. We’re looking for an end of this conflict and for justice and accountability for these crimes to prevail.

Q. You served first as a judge and later as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In 1998, the tribunal ruled that rape and systematic sexual violence can constitute genocide if intended to destroy a specific group. It was a landmark ruling, but why has it taken so long for these crimes to be treated as more than a recurring horror of war?

A. They were not treated as crimes. I looked through some U.S. military manuals from the Vietnam War, and they encouraged soldiers to take those “yellow women” as a reward for fighting well. Some people think only killings amount to the destruction of a group, so this was the first time that view changed. On the other hand, I was told that many women will not come forward to give evidence, and that is a myth. Of course, if a group of white men goes to Rwanda, as they did, to hold big meetings and asks survivors what happened, they will not publicly say they were raped. Activists and NGOs have always said witnesses must be protected, and because we had reliable testimony, we were able to deliver convictions. I want to salute the courage of survivors of sexual violence who came forward to testify.

Q. You were born in South Africa and suffered under apartheid. Did you always want to be a lawyer or a judge?

A. I did it because those of us who grew up under that regime had no rights, and as a child I felt I wanted to know what people’s rights are. In that extreme situation where laws institutionalized racism, we were not exposed to what the U.N. was doing. There is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states everyone is equal. And apartheid was declared a crime against humanity, but this kind of information did not reach the general public in South Africa until some of us, the lawyers, used the outside mechanisms of international law. We wrote letters and sent them to leaders around the world, from then-prime minister Indira Gandhi of India to the French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir. The lawful struggle of civil society is a hard road, but it is the road that was chosen.

Q. On December 10, you will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Have you thought about what you will say in your acceptance speech?

A. We are witnessing an attack on the rule of law and going through precarious times where poor countries are being demonized by rich countries. I will speak about my life’s work and the way we approach these matters. I want to say that, right now, Spain is one of my favorite countries. I have great admiration for the King [Felipe VI], whom I have described as a human rights champion. And I respect that the prime minister [Pedro Sánchez] has taken a principled position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I also salute Spain for its consistent efforts to support the abolition of the death penalty.

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About 900,000 fresh flowers hung from walls, columns and ceilings; there were tins of caviar for each guest, Dom Pérignon, three wedding dresses and a 30-piece orchestra. The Waldorf Astoria ballroom in New York hosted a wedding in September that was put together in under three months and cost around $10 million, according to the U.S. media. It was the week of the United Nations General Assembly, with Manhattan full of heads of state and diplomats, and the party drew major figures from U.S. power circles, oligarchs, Congolese politicians, the rapper Nelly on stage, and even former boxer Mike Tyson. But above all the celebration brought together the top ranks of Trumpism: the attorney general Todd Blanche; the FBI director Kash Patel; and White House counsel Will Scharf. It was a MAGA wedding for the glossy magazines.

The hangover from that party has passed, but the couple has been dominating headlines for more than a week. No longer so much for their lavish wedding as for their connections and, above all, for the bitter fight that has erupted after this fairy-tale union. The bride, Alina Habba, 42, was once Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. The groom, Turhan Mildon, who says he is 29 — although some documents list him as being 25 — is a Turkish investor who did business in Venezuela thanks to Alex Saab, former president Nicolás Maduro’s front man. The couple met in late 2025 at Washington’s Kennedy Center and began dating in early 2026. And into this brief romance stepped an old friend of the couple, Richard Grenell, former U.S. special envoy to Caracas — which now explains why no one invited him to the party.

What might read like a Turkish soap opera is, at its core, a fight over Venezuela. Weeks after the wedding, on October 9, Habba entered the Oval Office to accuse Grenell of making millions of dollars transferred by her newlywed husband disappear. She did not pick an ordinary day: it was one day after The New York Times sent her husband a series of questions about his businesses in Venezuela.

Habba’s account, according to Axios and the Times, is that in the spring of 2025 Grenell persuaded Mildon to transfer $17.6 million to TX-AT, a Texas security and defense firm for which Grenell worked as a consultant in 2024. The details of the deal behind that transfer remain unclear, but Axios reports thatGrenell sent a message promising that the investment would be rewarded with access to the U.S. president, VIP events and administration officials. Of that total, $5.6 million was meant to be used as a donation to the Kennedy Center, which Grenell was then running, but the money never arrived.

The tangle has grown in recent days. The money transfer, The New York Times reports, did not actually come directly from Mildon but from an account linked to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose president had hired the Turkish businessman as an adviser. Grenell calls the whole thing absurd, denies the messages and says he never received a cent from Mildon.

The struggle over Venezuela

The plot goes beyond Washington power squabbles and exposes two men who tried to profit from the U.S. push against Chavismo and were swept up by Maduro’s fall. On October 12, The New York Times published a piece laying out the first details of the dispute that was about to erupt. It linked the Turkish investor to Saab’s front operations and reported that in June the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez — the same official who handed Saab over to Washington — had ordered the freezing of Mildon’s contracts in the country. Rodríguez cited failure to meet investment goals, but the punishment, the Times reports, did not last long. The chavista leader reversed course as soon as she learned the name of the Turkish investor’s new bride.

The Kennedy Center’s starring role turns this story into a personal matter for Trump, who appointed himself chair of its board. U.S. media have revealed Trump had grown disenchanted with Grenell over a string of negative headlines about the institution. The president announced Grenell’s departure in March of this year, and earlier, in November 2025, Democratic senators had opened an investigation into him and the center’s leadership over cronyism and corruption, which Grenell denied. This time, Trump put the case in the hands of Will Scharf, his counsel, one of the notable guests at the wedding. Mildon’s lawyer handed over text messages and a transfer receipt. In one message from May 2025, Grenell allegedly said he wanted to make Mildon the U.S. face in Venezuela.

The formula for success

Mildon grew up in a small Turkish town near the Dardanelles Strait, where his family owned auto shops and gas stations. He summed up his formula this month to Forbes Turkey with a play on English words: previously the emphasis was on know-how, now it’s on know-who. He put that premise to use in 2021 by marrying the daughter of a construction magnate close to Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. Later, in the RDC — where in 2023 he began advising President Félix Tshisekedi — he obtained a diplomatic passport and won major public contracts. And in June 2025, just months after his divorce, Mildon became engaged to María Eugenia Ceballos, daughter of Venezuelan Admiral Remigio Ceballos, the entrepreneur’s spokesman told the Times. Ceballos was for years the operational chief of Venezuela’s armed forces, a man sanctioned by the U.S. for corruption and human rights abuses.

At the end of 2023 Mildon landed in Caracas and found his true godfather. Alex Saab had just returned from a U.S. prison after a prisoner swap with the Biden administration, and months later Maduro appointed him minister of industry, in charge of dealing with foreign investors. In March 2025, Saab awarded him the operation of the state cement plants. Months later, he handed him a shrimp business expropriated from its founder, who was jailed after being accused of financing the opposition. Mildon boasted to Forbes Turkey of producing 4.5 million tons of cement a year, three times the country’s total output according to figures seen by the Times. In June he visited a cement plant wearing chavista red and posed with his thumbs up, in a Trump-style gesture. His business group said in a statement there have been no cancellations of its contracts and that its business volume continues to grow.

Mildon not only did business with Saab but also tried to sell his virtues to Washington. According to The New York Times, he spent months trying to build ties between Maduro’s front man and Republicans in Trump’s circle. Several people who met Mildon before the autocrat’s capture on January 3 told the paper that he praised Saab and presented him as “the main power operator in Venezuela and the key to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the United States.” The Trump administration even considered sanctioning Mildon, two people involved in those talks told the paper. His spokesman called that a “totally false and malicious rumor,” and a U.S. official also cast doubt that sanctions had been seriously contemplated.

Grenell, for his part, had positioned himself as the man of dialogue in Venezuela. In January 2025 the diplomat met with Maduro at Miraflores and returned with six freed Americans. He sold that as his great achievement, although behind the scenes there was also Harry Sargeant III, an American oil magnate who has been sidelined by Washington. For months Grenell argued that an agreement with Chavismo was possible, even opening Venezuela’s oil in exchange for Maduro remaining in power.

Mildon and Grenell were allies of the same cause and defended Chavismo’s survival, though their fates are now uncertain. The dialogue strategy ended up in a drawer in the Oval Office. Marco Rubio cornered Grenell, persuaded Trump to harden his stance, capture Maduro and select Delcy Rodríguez as successor. With January 3, both men lost influence, although Mildon’s fortunes have been radically altered by his romance with Habba. Love triumphed while also unleashing an internal war.

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