19:26 14 March 2021
Pole elected as president of International Criminal Court
Judge Piotr Hofmański was elected International Criminal Court (ICC) President for 2021-2024. Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza and Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua elected First & Second Vice-Presidents respectively.
"One of the greatest successes in the Polish legal world," is how Adam Bodnar, the Ombudsman for Citizens' Rights, described this choice via Twitter.
The Bureau plays a key role in ensuring the strategic leadership of the ICC. It is responsible for administering the Court, with an exception being the Public Prosecutor's Office. It also supervises the activities of the office and conducts judicial control of some decisions of the Registrar. It also contains cooperation agreements that cover the entire court as well as states and international organizations.
Piotr Hofmański is also the first Pole to hold the position of an ICC judge – his nine-year term began in 2015. The Pole was then elected by a 2/3 majority.
Earlier e was a judge of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court in Poland, and from 1999 he was the press spokesman of this institution. As a judge of the ICC, he presided, inter alia, the Board of Appeal in its investigation of the situation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
