The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague,Netherlands.
Richard Joseph Goldstone is a South African retired judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from July 1994 to October 2003. He joined the bench as a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa,first in the Transvaal Provincial Division from 1980 to 1989 and then in the Appellate Division from 1990 to 1994. Before that,he was a commercial lawyer in Johannesburg,where he entered legal practice in 1963 and took silk in 1976.
The Srebrenica massacre,also known as the Srebrenica genocide,was the July 1995 genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. It was mainly perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska under Ratko Mladić,though the Serb paramilitary unit Scorpions also participated. The massacre was the first legally recognised genocide in Europe since the end of World War II.
The Bosnian genocide took place during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 and included both the Srebrenica massacre and the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing campaign perpetrated throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys,as well as the mass expulsion of another 25000–30000 Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladić.
Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni was an Egyptian-American emeritus professor of law at DePaul University,where he taught from 1964 to 2012. He served in numerous United Nations positions and served as the consultant to the US Department of State and Justice on many projects. He was a founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University which was established in 1990. He served as president from 1990 to 1997 and then as president emeritus. Bassiouni is often referred to by the media as "the Godfather of International Criminal Law" and a "war crimes expert". As such,he served on the Steering Committee for The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative,which was launched to study the need for a comprehensive convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity,and draft a proposed treaty. He spearheaded the drafting of the proposed convention,which as of 2014 is being debated at the International Law Commission.
Fausto Pocar is an Italian jurist.
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.
Gabrielle Anne Kirk McDonald is an American lawyer and jurist who,until her retirement in October 2013,served as an American arbitrator on the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal seated in The Hague.
The siege of Srebrenica was a three-year siege of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina which lasted from April 1992 to July 1995 during the Bosnian War. Initially assaulted by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Serbian Volunteer Guard (SDG),the town was encircled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) in May 1992,starting a brutal siege which was to last for the majority of the Bosnian War. In June 1995,the commander of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) in the enclave,Naser Orić,left Srebrenica and fled to the town of Tuzla. He was subsequently replaced by his deputy,Major Ramiz Bećirović.
William Anthony Schabas,OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom,professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands,and an internationally respected expert on human rights law,genocide and the death penalty.
O-Gon Kwon is a South Korean jurist,best known for being one of the three judges in the trial of Slobodan Milošević. He also sat on the bench for the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1931,adopted unanimously on June 29,2010,after recalling resolutions 827 (1993),1581 (2005),1597 (2005),1613 (2005),1629 (2005),1660 (2006),1668 (2006),1800 (2008),1837 (2008),1849 (2008),1877 (2009),1900 (2009) and 1915 (2010),the Council noted that the 2010 target for the completion of trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) could not be met,and therefore extended the terms of 23 judges at the ICTY.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1481,adopted unanimously on 19 May 2003,after recalling resolutions 827 (1993),1166 (1998),1329 (2000),1411 (2002) and 1431 (2002),the Council amended the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to allow temporary judges to adjudicate in pre-trial proceedings in other cases before their appointment to a trial.
Christoph Flügge is a German jurist and judge. From June 2001 to February 2007,he was Secretary of State in the Department of Justice of the State of Berlin. On 18 September 2008,he was appointed permanent judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). As a result of controversial comments made in 2009,some genocide scholars and victims' groups have accused him of genocide denial in relation to the Bosnian Genocide and more specifically the Srebrenica genocide. He served as a judge in the war crimes trial against Radovan Karadžić,but was removed from the case. In 2011,he was appointed presiding judge in the trial of Ratko Mladić,but there have been calls for his resignation from several Bosnian victims' groups.
The thematic debate on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation is an interactive thematic public debate convened on 10 April 2013 by Vuk Jeremić,President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) during the assembly's 67th session. The debate was organized after the conclusion of the Trial of Gotovina et al at the ICTY in which the court acquitted two defendants charged with war crimes against Serbs in Croatia. Some countries,notably the United States and Croatia,refused to participate in the debate and some of the invited participants,such as the president of the ICTY,cancelled their participation.
Flavia Lattanzi is an Italian lawyer specialized in international law who is an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 2007 and professor at the Roma Tre University. Between 2003 and 2007,she served as an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Gabrielle Louise McIntyre (Australian) is an international legal practitioner,jurist,and served as the Chairperson of the Seychelles' Truth,Reconciliation and National Unity Commission.
Frederik Harhoff is a Danish jurist. He was a member of the faculty of the University of Copenhagen and served as an ad litem judge for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 9 January 2007 to 28 August 2013. After acquittals of mid-level Serbian suspects in war crimes trials,Harhoff circulated a letter to colleagues stating that the higher bar for convictions in this case was established by ICTY Chief Justice Theodor Meron,and strongly hinted that Meron was acting on behalf of the U.S. and Israel in enacting the policy. The Harhoff letter was highly controversial when it was leaked to the press,and Harhoff was disqualified from a separate war crimes trial for being set on conviction regardless of evidence,later departing the ICTY when his term of office was not renewed there.
Bosnian genocide denial is the act of denying the occurrence of the systematic genocide against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina,or asserting it did not occur in the manner or to the extent that has been established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) through proceedings and judgments,and described by comprehensive scholarship.
Diane Orentlicher is a professor of international law at American University's Washington College of Law in Washington,D.C.,and serves as Co-Faculty Director of its Center on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. In the mid-1990s,she founded the law school's War Crimes Research Office,which provides legal analysis in support of international and transitional justice initiatives.
