23.11.07 - ICTR/ICC - TWO ICTR OFFICIALS ARE CANDIDATES FOR ICC REGISTRAR

  The Hague, 23 November 2007 (FH) - The election campaign of the future registrar of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to which two ICTR officials are in the contest, will enter a new stage during the Assembly of States Parties, which will be held from 30 November to December 14 in New York.   

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During their sixth session, since the opening of the Court on 1 July 2002, the 105 states having ratified the Statute of Rome will have to put forth "recommendations" on the ten candidatures among the 97 selected by the presidency of the Court at the beginning of October.
 
The name of the future registrar, who will have to be elected in secret vote by the majority of the judges, will only be known in the first quarter 2008. Elected on 24 June 2003, the French magistrate Bruno Cathala did Wish for another five-year mandate.
 
Among the candidates, two are from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The current registrar, Adama Dieng, who could appear among the outsiders; and the chief of prosecution, Sylvana Arbia.
 
In his letter of candidature, Registrar Adama Dieng writes that "it is with my thorough knowledge of the management of an institution whose solidness is not to be proved anymore, combined with my long experience with unique qualifications and abilities perfectly adapted to the requirements of such a position, which I base myself to propose with abnegation and humility my services to the representatives of the states parties".
 
The former general registrar of the Supreme Court of Senegal and former secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists estimates that at "a time when the Court, confronted with the challenges of globalization, is at a crossroads, the modest artisan which I am, strong of his experience and because of his stature, will only be able to contribute to guaranteeing the serenity and the reinforcement of the conquests realized by the Court during the first years of its existence".
 
Among the ten candidates for the position of registrar of the Court, four are women, including Sylvana Arbia, chief of prosecution at the office of the prosecutor of the ICTR, who estimates that "the future depends on the capacity of the institution to benefit from the experience of the ad hoc tribunals. In this respect, the eight years that I spent at the ICTR should allow for a smooth transition".
 
"My thorough knowledge of all the legal procedures should favour the set up of external as well as internal relation plans capable of leading to the instauration of modern and effective modes of co-operation between the institutions and the States and external organizations", she affirms.
 
As experience, Sylvana Arbia specifies having directed the prosecution in the Butare trial, which should be known as the worst managed trial in the history of international justice. Opened on 11 June 2001, it is still not finished. But the prosecutor does not regret anything with 59 witnesses called to the stand and 212 days of testimonies.
 
The eight other candidates are Briton Chetwynd Richard, on duty in the Solomon Islands during the coup d'état of June 2000; Italian Annunziata Ciaravolo, former anti-mafia prosecutor of Milan and former international judge in Kosovo; John Hocking, an Australian lawyer currently associate registrar at the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; Pastor Borgonon, from Spain, current assistant registrar of the court of first instance of the European Community; Kalyani Pillay, director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa, German Judge Klaus Rackwitz, consultant with the ICC; Indian Rowed Rao Sankuthripati, director at the World Intellectual Property Organization; and Markus Zimmer, a Swiss-American, former head of the ICTY administration.
 
Whoever the elected candidate, the future registrar of the Court will be confronted with two major dossiers: the conference of states parties on the revision of the statute, which must be held during the summer of 2009; and the setting up of the future offices of the Court.
 
SM/PB/MM

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