International judge Carol Peralta is back in Malta permanently but could not say whether he will be returning to the Bench.
Dr Peralta served as magistrate before joining the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo in July 2003 to serve as an international judge with jurisdiction over war crimes and organised crime.
He was originally based in Mitrovica, which is still a divided city – half Albanian and half Serb. Within a year, he was appointed Presiding Judge of the Special Chamber of the Supreme Court of Kosovo, dealing with privatisation matters. Ten months later he was elevated to the position of Chief International Judge of Kosovo with overall responsibility of managing the international justice programme in the country.
In this capacity, he also presided over trials involving war crimes and international terrorism trials.
In January 2008, Dr Peralta was asked to join the State Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina as an international judge with first instance jurisdiction over war crimes and organised crime. In September 2010, he was elevated to the Appeal Chambers of the same court where he has been mainly dealing with appeals filed by the accused in the Srebrenica trials in which members of the Bosnian Serb army have been accused of the massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak men during the war in Bosnia that lasted from 1992 to 1995.