Maltese Judge Carmel (Lino) Agius has been appointed president of the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.
The IRMICT is an international court established by the United Nations Security Council in 2010 to perform the remaining functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) following the completion of those tribunals’ respective mandates.
The appointment, by the secretary general of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, was made after consultations with the 15 members of the Security Council and is effective from January 19, 2019 until June 30, 2020.
Mr Justice Agius was elected to the IRMICT by the UN General Assembly in 2012 and is currently on the Bench dealing with the appeal of Ratko Mladic against his conviction for genocide and other crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In 2015, Judge Agius became the first ever Maltese Judge to become president of an international court when he was elected ICTY President. He served as president until the end of 2017 while he previously served as the Tribunal’s vice-president for four years.
He was elected judge of the ICTY by the General Assembly of the UN in 2001 becoming the first ever Maltese judge to be elected to serve on a UN court. He was re-elected by the same body in 2004.
During his tenure at the ICTY, Judge Agius presided over several trials including the multi-accused trial of Popovic et al. that dealt with the Srebrenica genocide. He also served as appeals judge in both the ICTY and the ICTR in many appeals.
During his term as President of the ICTY, Judge Agius addressed the Security Council five times and the General Assembly on two occasions. In January, Mr Justice Agius is expected to assume the presidency of the Mladic appeal. Currently, the IRMICT apart from the Mladic appeal is also seized with the appeal lodged by Radovan Karadzic which is expected to be decided by the end of the current year.
Before taking up his post at the ICTY in 2001, Mr Justice Agius served as magistrate from 1977 until 1982 and afterwards as Judge of the Superior Courts of Malta in the Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court. He retired from the Maltese judiciary in August 2010. In 2015 he was made an Officer of the National Order of Malta (Ġieħ ir-Repubblika).