Yvonne Webb

High Court judge An­tho­ny Thomas Aquinas Car­mona has been elect­ed a judge of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC), Hague.The elec­tions took place at the Unit­ed Na­tions in New York on Mon­day.Car­mona, 58, who was nom­i­nat­ed for the po­si­tion by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, was al­so the Cari­com rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the elec­tions which saw judges from 18 coun­tries world­wide, com­pet­ing for one of six places on the ICC.Car­mona won the of­fice in the first bal­lot in the As­sem­bly of States Par­ties, con­sist­ing of 119 coun­tries, with 72 votes.He placed sec­ond to Miri­am De­fen­sor San­ti­a­go, the first Fil­ipino and Asian from a de­vel­op­ing coun­try to serve as ICC judge. She gar­nered 79 votes. On­ly 70 votes were need­ed.

He and five oth­er judges will take up of­fice on March 11, 2012.The ap­point­ment, which is for nine years, means that Car­mona, who has been on the Bench since 2004, will have to give up his po­si­tion as a judge and mi­grate to the Hague.Among his more no­table cas­es are the first suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion in the British Com­mon­wealth of se­nior mag­is­trate Patrick Jages­sar for cor­rup­tion and the first suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion at Court of Ap­peal in the West In­dies of Farouk Ali, a Jus­tice of the Peace, for cor­rup­tion.Car­mona is at present pre­sid­ing in the San Fer­nan­do Supreme Court over the tri­al in which Mar­lon King is ac­cused of killing his step­daugh­ter Amy An­na­muntho­do.Over the next few months, he will have to com­plete all of the cas­es be­fore him.Car­mona is the sec­ond Trinida­di­an to have been elect­ed to the ICC, the in­de­pen­dent body that pros­e­cutes in­di­vid­u­als for crimes against hu­man­i­ty and war crimes.

The first was for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Karl Hud­son-Phillips who was elect­ed in 2003 to serve for nine years, but re­signed the po­si­tion in 2007 for per­son­al rea­sons. He is al­so the sec­ond mem­ber of the lo­cal ju­di­cia­ry to have been elect­ed to an in­ter­na­tion­al law body. The first was Jus­tice An­tho­ny Lucky who was re­cent­ly re­elect­ed to the In­ter­na­tion­al Tri­bunal Law of the Sea (IT­LOS).Lucky's daugh­ter, for­mer judge Gillian Lucky, con­grat­u­lat­ed Car­mona on his ap­point­ment.She said hav­ing worked with him as a tem­po­rary judge and hav­ing ap­peared be­fore him as a prac­ti­tion­er, "I can at­test to his in­tegri­ty, com­pe­tence and com­mit­ment to the pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try."About An­tho­ny Car­mon­aAn­tho­ny Car­mona was born on March 7, 1953. He at­tend­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do.He at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Sir Hugh Wood­ing Law School be­tween 1973 and 1983. In 1989, he be­came a se­nior state At­tor­ney.

From 1994 to 1999, he was first As­sis­tant then Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. From 2001 to 2004, he was an Ap­peals Coun­sel at the Of­fice of the Pros­e­cu­tor at the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for the for­mer Yu­goslavia in The Hague as well as the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da in Arusha.

In 2004, he was ap­point­ed a High Court judge at the Supreme Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go