Terms extended for ad hoc judges at UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia

Seeking to ensure that the United Nations International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) can complete trying all defendants before it by 2008, the Security Council today extended the mandates of several short-term judges whose tenure were to expire before the end of the trials they were conducting.

The Council created the pool of ad hoc, or ad litem, judges, to serve four-year terms in June 2001 in an effort to speed up the work of ICTY, which was set up in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1993 to prosecute those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the wars that saw the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Today's action, which affects five cases before the ICTY, came at the request of Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the recommendation of the court president, Judge Theodor Meron.