War Crimes Committee Conference - Session 4: The challenges to undertaking domestic and hybrid trials for atrocity crimes

Michelle Butler has fifteen years of experience working as a barrister at Matrix Chambers specialising in international criminal law, public international law, human rights and arbitration. In this context, she represents States, political and military leaders, corporate entities and NGOs before an array of domestic and international courts and tribunals. Michelle’s cases generally intersect with armed conflict. She acted for Libya in its ICC admissibility challenges in the cases of Saif Gaddafi and Abdullah Al-Senussi. She represented the Democratic Republic of the Congo in its recent ICJ proceedings seeking reparations for loss of life, loss of natural resources and property damage caused by Uganda during the armed conflict from 1998 to 2003. Michelle was counsel for Georgia in its ECtHR claim against Russia arising out of the 2008 invasion of South Ossetia and Upper Abkhazia. She also acted for the displaced Azeri Kurdish claimants from Nagorno-Karabakh in the ECtHR case of Chiragov v Armenia. Michelle is instructed in the ICC proceedings relating to the Situations in Palestine and Georgia and is presently advising the UK on the domestic law framework underpinning its cooperation obligations with the ICC. Michelle has also served as defence counsel (and previously, consultant and legal assistant) in several ICL cases, including: Kosgey at the ICC; and Zupljanin, Gvero, Krajisnik, Seselj, Limaj and Musliu at the ICTY. She has additionally represented witnesses in the cases of Ntaganda at the ICC and Taylor at the SCSL.

Christopher Gosnell has twenty years of experience working in international criminal courts and tribunals, including at the ICTY, ICC, ICTR, MICT and Special Court for Sierra Leone. He served as defence counsel in numerous cases before those courts, including the Ntaganda, Bemba et al., Hadzic, Taylor, and Popovic et al. cases. He formerly worked in the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY and in Chambers at the ICTR. After starting his legal career as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, he was an associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. He has been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School in New York, an adjunct lecturer at the Académie de droit humanitaire in Geneva, and is the co-editor of Principles of Evidence in International Criminal Justice. He is also the author of articles and book chapters, including “Damned If You Don’t: Liability for Omissions in International Criminal Law,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law. He has worked at the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL, and is currently a Senior Legal Officer with the United Nations.

Carmen Cheung Ka-Man is Executive Director at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), an international human rights organization dedicated to working with impacted communities to seek truth, justice and redress for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, and other core international crimes through innovative litigation and transitional justice strategies. An international litigator, Carmen specializes in litigating human rights cases in domestic courts, and has acted as counsel in significant public interest cases in the United States and Canada involving torture, extrajudicial killings, and other serious rights violations. Prior to joining CJA, she was a Professor of Global Practice at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where her research and teaching focused on security and human rights. At the University of Toronto, Carmen also served as Associate Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict, & Justice, as well as Executive Director of the Global Justice Lab. She received her JD from Columbia Law School and graduated with an AB in Social Studies from Harvard University.