Forrest i kampen for at dømme massemordere
ARUSHA, 14 February 2012: The United Nations tribunal dealing with the worst war crimes committed during the 1994 genocide (folkedrab) in Rwanda has elected a new President.
Judge Vagn Joensen from Denmark will be the next President of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and Judge Florence Rita Arrey from Cameroon was chosen as Vice-President, Joensens prior assignment since August last year.
Judge Joensen replaces Judge Khalida Rachid Khan from Pakistan, and Judge Arrey succeeds Judge Joensen. The newly elected officials will assume their duties on 2 March and 14 February, respectively.
Before joining the tribunal in May 2007, Vagn Joensen (61) was a judge at the Danish High Court and also served as an international judge for the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in 2001-02.
Born in 1950, Judge Joensen obtained a Master of Law in 1973 at the University of Aarhus and served in the Danish Ministry of Justice until he was appointed a Judge at the City Court of Copenhagen in 1982.
He had been teaching constitutional, criminal and civil law at the Law Faculty of the University of Aarhus and that of the University of Copenhagen. At International level he has studied at the City of London College in 1972, at Harvard Law School in 1979.
Judge Joensen has been the chairperson of the tribunal’s rules committee since its inception in 2007.
Based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, the ICTR was set up after the Rwandan genocide, when at least 800.000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed during three months of bloodletting.
The massacres followed the death of then president Juvenal Habyarimana when his plane was brought down over the capital, Kigali.
Tilføjelse U-landsnyt.dk:
Vagn Joensens tid i spidsen for Rwanda-tribunalet, der begyndte sit arbejde i 1995, vil imidlertid blive kort, idet tribunalet i henhold til FN-Sikkerhedsrådets beslutning skal have afsluttet sit arbejde i år.
Det har dømt ca. 40 personer, idet et mindre antal sager er henvist til pådømmelse ved nationale domstole.
Man kan læse mere om folkedrabsdomstolen på http://www.unictr.org
Kilde: FNs Nyhedstjeneste
