ERIC EMERAUX is a Colonel (ER) of the French Gendarmerie Nationale. After a career in the French Army, he joined the Gendarmerie Nationale where he held various leadership positions before being appointed commander of a Regional Criminal Investigations Unit (2004-2009) and advising the Gendarmerie Regional Commander of Lyon on criminal investigations (2009-2012). After five years (2012-2017) as a police attaché at the French Embassy in Sarajevo, he was appointed head of the Central Office for Combatting crimes against Humanity, Genocides, War Crimes and Hate Crimes (OCLCH) a criminal investigation interagencies central unit based in Paris. He retired from the gendarmerie in 2020. La traque est mon métier, published by Plon in 2020, was awarded the Ouvrage de la Gendarmerie 2021 and the Prix des lecteurs du Ministère de la Défense 2022. It is translated and published in English as Hunting Monsters by Sutherland House
“Eric Emeraux travels deep into the “black gash of human experience” that he describes so vividly in Hunting Monsters: Bringing Justice to the World’s Worst War Criminals. The former war crimes investigator gives us a rare inside look into ‘the bureaucracy of butchers,’ cataloguing their horrific deeds but also the endless stake-outs and the meticulous behind-the scenes detective work that brings war criminals to justice. This is an urgent, necessary book on modern crimes against humanity and the monsters that quietly live among us.” – ISABEL VINCENT, AUTHOR OF HITLER’S SILENT PARTNERS: SWISS BANKS, NAZI GOLD, AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE “This book is not for the faint-hearted. Nonetheless, it ought to be read by anyone with an interest in international law and the complexities of war-crimes investigations. In a highly readable manner, Colonel Emeraux illuminates the atrocities committed, the mechanics of case building, and the technical aspects of criminal investigations. His rogues’ gallery of grubby suspects–Liberians, Rwandans, Serbs and Syrians–is rightly and artfully rendered secondary to the heroism of those who have borne witness to horrendous suffering, supported so ably by the author of this book and his peers. At the same time, Emeraux shows the reader what motivates the men and women who pursue war criminals: the search for a measure of justice, however symbolic, for those who have suffered egregious wrongs.” – WILLIAM H. WILEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMISSION FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY