On Friday 31 January the General Assembly of the United Nations elected eleven permanent judges to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 25 May 2003 to 24 May 2007. The eleven included seven judges re-elected from among those currently serving and four newly elected judges.

The four new judges are Sergei Aleckseievich Egorov (Russian Federation), Inés Mónica Weinberg de Roca(Argentina), Jai Ram Reddy (Fiji) and Mansoor Ahmed (Pakistan). Biographical details of the new judges are linked to the electronic version of this press release on the ICTR website (www.ictr.org).

Of the current judges Judge Navanethem Pillay (South Africa), President of the ICTR, and Judge Yakov Arkadievich Ostrovsky (Russia Federation) did not seek re-election. Judges Pavel Dolenc (Slovenia) and Winston Churchill Matanzima Maqutu (Lesotho) were not re-elected.

The election required five rounds of balloting and lasted until 21h41 on Friday evening. This followed the annulment of three rounds of voting on Wednesday 29 January by the President of the General Assembly because one Member State which had participated in the vote was not in fact eligible to do so.

The Tribunal in its new composition will hold a plenary session at a date yet to be fixed for the new judges to be sworn in and to elect a President and Vice-President. The new President will then assign the judges to the various Chambers of the Tribunal.

In accordance with Security Council Resolution 1431 of 14 August 2002 the General Assembly will shortly proceed to elect a pool of 18 ad litem judges for the ICTR of whom four may sit in the Trial Chambers of the Tribunal at any one time. The Security Council adopted this measure in order to enable the ICTR to expedite the conclusion of its work at the earliest possible date.