Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua (born 31 December 1956 in Mushie, Belgian Congo) [1] is a Congolese lawyer who is currently a judge of the International Criminal Court. [2] He was previously a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. [1]
Mindua studied law and political science in Kinshasa, Nancy-Université, Strasbourg and Geneva. He received his doctorate in international law from the University of Geneva in 1995. [3]
Mindua served first as a Legal Officer and Chief of the Judicial Proceedings Support Unit at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha from 1996 to 2001. He was also ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Switzerland in Bern and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva from 2001 to 2006. During his tenure in Geneva, Mindua held a number of multilateral posts, including Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Programme of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Chairman of the Group of 77 (G77) and China, and Coordinator of the Group of 21 at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament. [3]
Mindua later served as a Trial Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague from 2006 to 2015. [3]
Within the ICC, Kesia-Mbe chaired the Pre-Trial Division from 2018 until 2019. In 2018, he was assigned to consider the request of prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for the ICC to rule on whether it has jurisdiction over the deportations of Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh. [4] Also in 2018, he presided over hearings of Alfred Yekatom, a former militia leader accused of alleged atrocities against Muslims in the Central African Republic. [5] In 2020, he was part of the three-member panel who judged that former Congolese vice president and militia leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, who had been acquitted of war crimes by the court in 2018, was not entitled to any damages or compensation for his 10-year stint in the United Nations Detention Unit (UNDU). [6] [7]
Mindua is also a professor at the Universities of Kinshasa and Geneva. He teaches public international law and international criminal law.
He is a member of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative Advisory Council, a project of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis to establish the world's first[ dubious ] treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.[ citation needed ]
The International Criminal Court is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The ICC is distinct from the International Court of Justice, an organ of the United Nations that hears disputes between states.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic criminal acts which are committed by or on behalf of a de facto authority, usually by or on behalf of a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war. They are not isolated or sporadic events because they are part of a government policy or they are part of a widespread practice of atrocities which is tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. They do not need to be part of an official policy, but they only need to be tolerated by authorities.
The Movement for the Liberation of the Congo is a political party in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Formerly a rebel group operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo that fought the government throughout the Second Congo War, it subsequently took part in the transitional government and is one of the main opposition parties.
International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is a politician in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He has served as the DRC's Vice Prime Minister and defence minister since 2023. He was previously one of four vice-presidents in the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 17 July 2003 to December 2006. He led the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC), a rebel group turned political party. He received the second-highest number of votes in the 2006 presidential election. In January 2007, he was elected to the Senate.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is a convicted war criminal from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the first person ever convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He founded and led the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and was a key player in the Ituri conflict (1999–2007). Rebels under his command have been accused of massive human rights violations, including ethnic massacres, murder, torture, rape, mutilation, and forcibly conscripting child soldiers.
The International Criminal Court has opened investigations in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Darfur in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Uganda, Bangladesh/Myanmar, Palestine, the Philippines, and Venezuela. Additionally, the Office of the Prosecutor conducted preliminary examinations in situations in Bolivia, Colombia, Guinea, Iraq / the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Georgia, Honduras, South Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela. Preliminary investigations were closed in Gabon; Honduras; registered vessels of Comoros, Greece, and Cambodia; South Korea; and Colombia on events since 1 July 2002.
Christine, Baroness Van den Wyngaert is a Belgian jurist and judge. She served as international and comparative criminal law expert from 2009 to 2018 as a judge on the International Criminal Court. She served in the Trial Division Chamber. On 8 July 2013, Van den Wyngaert was ennobled by King Albert II of Belgium as a baroness for her services as a judge. From 2003 to 2005 she was a Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and from 2000 to 2002 an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice.
Marc Perrin de Brichambaut is a French career judge and diplomat. On 10 December 2014 he was elected a judge to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Until 30 June 2011 he was the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Sylvia Helena de Figueiredo Steiner is a Brazilian judge who was a member of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2016.
Germain Katanga, also known as Simba, is a former leader of the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI), an armed group in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). On 17 October 2007, the Congolese authorities surrendered him to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to stand trial on six counts of war crimes and three counts of crimes against humanity. The charges include murder, sexual slavery, rape, destruction of property, pillaging, willful killing, and directing crimes against civilians.
Daniel David Ntanda Nsereko is a Ugandan judge and legal scholar. He was a member of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2008 to 2012, and currently serves as a judge on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui is a colonel in the Congolese army and a former senior commander of the National Integrationist Front (FNI) and the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI).
An atrocity crime is a violation of international criminal law that falls under the historically three legally defined international crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing is widely regarded as a fourth mass atrocity crime by legal scholars and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field, despite not yet being recognized as an independent crime under international law.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1993, adopted unanimously on June 29, 2011, after recalling resolutions 827 (1993), 1503 (2003) and 1534 (2003), the Council extended the terms of office of 17 permanent and temporary judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Robert Fremr is a Czech jurist who has been serving as a judge of the International Criminal Court since 2011.
Kuniko Ozaki, is a Japanese lawyer who served as judge of the International Criminal Court and the Presiding Judge of Trial Chamber V, constituted to try the cases against four Kenyan nationals. Specially-appointed professor of International Human Right Law at Chuo University Faculty of Law (2021-).
Piotr Józef Hofmański is a Polish jurist and judge who has served as President of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2021. He has been a judge of the ICC since 2015. His election into the Presidency of the ICC is for a three-year term. Prior to his tenure as a judge of the ICC, Hofmański was a legal expert and advisor at the Council of Europe.
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