War Crimes Committee Conference - Session 5: Legal pluralism and the International Criminal Court

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Professor Mohamed Elewa Badar holds the Chair in Comparative and International Criminal Law & Islamic Law at Northumbria Law School, Newcastle, UK. He previously held a position as a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Brunel Law School, London (2007-2013). He has also taught and acted as a convenor of International Law & Islamic Law module at Durham Law School (2011-2013). Prof Badar served as Senior Prosecutor and Judge in Egypt from 1997-2006. He recently acted as a Senior Expert for Euromed Justice IV, a project funded by the European Commission for enhancing Euro-Mediterranean mutual legal assistance on the investigation and prosecution of complex judicial cases i.e. terrorism, money laundering and cybercrime and was selected by EUROJUST to continue the other phases of the same project. He also served as a senior Police investigator in Egypt. He was a member (investigator) of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate and report on allegations of human rights violations during the civil unrest in Bahrain in February/March 2011 and has participated in the judicial reform in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under the supervision of Professor M Cherif Bassiouni. He had the opportunity to work as an expert for the United Nations Interregional Crimes and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Prof Badar is the single author of The Concept of Mens Rea in International Criminal Law (Oxford: Hart, 2013/2015) and the Islamist Militants and the Their Challenges to Sharia and International Criminal Law (Hart, 2022). He published 50 articles in refereed journals and chapters in prominent books. His work was cited and quoted by the international criminal tribunals and by distinguished scholars. He presented his research in 35 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and US and has acted 12 times as a PhD external examiner Prof Badar is Member of the Editorial Board and Reviewer for the International Criminal Law Review, the International Human Rights Law Review, the Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law and the International University of Sarajevo Law Journal. In May 2021, Prof. Badar was invited by the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da‘esh/ISIL (UNITAD) to participate in the training course that aims to deepen the knowledge and expertise of key members of the Iraqi judiciary in the areas of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law.

Mashood A. Baderin is Professor of Laws at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He holds a First Class LLB (Hons) Combined Double Major Degree in Common Law and Islamic Law from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto Nigeria. He thereafter attended the Nigerian Law School and qualified as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. After some years in legal practice, he obtained scholarship grants for his postgraduate studies at the University of Nottingham, where he obtained his LLM in Public International Law, studying Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law, International Human Rights Law, Law of International Organisations, and Collective Security Law, and after that obtained his PhD in Comparative Human Rights Law from the same university. He taught at different universities in the UK before joining SOAS as Professor of Laws in 2007. He was Head of the SOAS School of Law from 2009 - 2012; Director of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law from 2012-2015; and Chair of the SOAS Centre of African Studies from 2014-2018. He was appointed as the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan from 2012 -2014.

Ebrahim Afsah is a professor of Islamic law at the Department of European, International and Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna. He is currently on leave as an associate professor for public international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Copenhagen, and a visiting professor of international relations at the University of Brest, France. He has been trained at the Universities of London, Dublin and Harvard, and the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. Prior to his academic posts, he worked for many years on state-building, legal and administrative reform, especially in Afghanistan. In recent years, he has won fellowships to the European University Institute in Florence (Fernand Braudel), the Norwegian Academy of Science (Nordic Civil Wars), Harvard Law School (Islamic Legal Studies Program) and the National University of Singapore (Centre for Asian Legal Studies).

Rasmus H. Wandall, PhD Attorney, Jon Palle Buhl Law Firm & Research Fellow, University of Lund, Faculty of law. Specializes in criminal law, human rights and transnational law & conflict resolution. Former General Counsel of the International Association of Prosecutors in the Hague, Chief Advisor to the Director of Public Prosecutions of Denmark. Publishes in the fields of criminal procedure, sentencing and comparative socio-legal studies. Among other places, he has held academic positions at University of Copenhagen, NYU Law School, UC Berkeley, University of Oxford, Addis Ababa University. Currently holds a research fellowship with the University of Lund.

Helen Brady, an Australian lawyer, is the Senior Appeals Counsel and Head of the Appeals and Prosecution Legal Coordination Section in the OTP at the ICC. Since 2014, she has led the Prosecution on all appeals and post-appeal proceedings before the Appeals Chamber, advises prosecution teams and coordinates legal positions in cases and situations. Previously, as Senior Appeals Counsel and Appeals Counsel at the) ICTY, she appeared for the Prosecution in the appeals of 50 accused persons in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide cases at the ICTY and the ICTR, and advised on appeals and trials of another 50 accused. She also served as Chef de Cabinet to the President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Judge Antonio Cassese. Formerly, Ms. Brady was a prosecutor at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) in Sydney and worked in leading law firms in Sydney and San Francisco. As a member of the Australian Government delegation to the negotiations for the ICC, she was one of the negotiators and drafters of the ICC’s Statute and Rules of Procedure and Evidence. A graduate of ANU (BSc-LLB (Hons)) and Cambridge (LLM (Hons, 1st class), she has written more than 25 publications on international criminal law and procedure and lectured/presented on international criminal justice issues in more than 20 countries. She has also trained judges and lawyers at various international and domestic courts.