Council of Advisors, Board of Directors, and Staff

Council of Advisors

The Council of Advisors is composed of prestigious individuals in the field of international law. The Institute relies upon these volunteers for their expertise and advice.

• M. Cherif Bassiouni

  M. Cherif Bassiouni is Professor of Law, DePaul University and President of the International Institute of High Studies in Criminal Sciences, Siracusa, Italy. He has served in a wide range of capacities with the United Nations, including Special Rapporteur on The Rights to Restitution, Compensation and Rehabilitation for Victims of Grave Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in 1998; Vice-Chairman of the General Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in 1995; and Chairman of the U.N. Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council 780 (1992) to Investigate Violations of International Humanitarian Law in the Former Yugoslavia in 1993.
  Author of 60 books on U.S. Criminal Law, International and Comparative Criminal Law and Human Rights and 198 published articles, his publications have been cited by the International Court of Justice, the United States Supreme Court, United States Appellate and District Courts, and State Supreme Courts.
• Youk Chhang

  Youk Chhang is the Executive Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a project begun by the Cambodian Genocide Center at Yale University. The Center, operated entirely by Cambodians, gathers evidence of human rights violations by members of the Pol Pot regime. The Center's aims are to provide the public with a better understanding of the Pol Pot regime, and to those who might wish to pursue legal redress for crimes which might have been perpetrated under the Democratic Kampuchea, and to prevent the return of the Killing Fields to Cambodia through legal and peaceful means.
  Prior to working with the DC-Cam, Chhang was appointed by the United Nations to be part of the election monitoring force in Cambodia. He also served as community relations advisor to the Dallas, Texas Police Department.
• Richard Goldstone

  Richard J. Goldstone is a former member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the former Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He is the author of For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (Castle Lectures in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) (Yale University Press, September 2000), with a foreword written by The Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor.
• Dennis McManus

  Dennis McManus is Professor of Patristics and Medieval Latin Literature, Georgetown University. In addition to being a Latin Literature scholar, Professor McManus is an expert in ethics. He has been active in organization development with a number of non-profits and is currently advisor to the Board of Trustees of the Grgich Foundation.
• Ravi Nair

  Ravi Nair is the Director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, which seeks to investigate, document and disseminate information about human rights treaties, conventions, human rights education, refugees, media freedom, prison reforms, political imprisonment, torture summary executions, disappearances and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
  Nair was previously with Amnesty International in London. He serves on the board of the International Service for Human Rights, and has been an international consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Nair is a noted speaker on human rights issues.
• Manfred Seitner

  Manfred Seitner is the former Head of Europol's Co-operation Unit in The Hague. As such, he was responsible for the establishment of co-operation agreements between Europol and non-European Union states and international organizations, and for co-operation with external partners.
  Mr. Seitner's initial involvement with Europol began in April 1998 when he seconded by the Danish National Police as Program Manager to prepare Europol to deal with crimes committed or likely to be committed in the course of terrorist activities. Previously, he was the Police Commissioner for the United Nations International Police Task Force for the U.N. Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
  Before joining these international law enforcement agencies, Mr. Seitner had worked with the Danish National Police, culminating in his position as Police Commander and Head of Operations for the Danish National Security Service. He has taught many courses at the Danish Police Academy and the Danish Defense Academy on issues of, among others, police administration, counter intelligence, and counter terrorism.
• Jerome J. Shestack

  Jerome J. Shestack is an internationally prominent attorney with the firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen of Philadelphia. He is also a past President of the American Bar Association.
  A world leader in the international human rights movement, Mr. Shestak has chaired the International League for Human Rights for the past twenty years. He is the President of the Holocaust Museum Committee on Conscience. In addition, he founded and was the first chair of the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, was one of the founders of the Helsinki Watch Committee, and served as general counsel of Amnesty International in the United States.
  Mr. Shestak also serves as Counselor to the American Society of International Law, and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists. Among his many awards and honors, he is an Honorary Fellow of Columbia Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and holds three honorary Doctor of Law degrees.
• Dr. Clyde Snow

  Dr. Clyde Snow is a noted forensic anthropologist and consultant. He has conducted field investigations in the former Yugoslavia, Argentina, Guatemala, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and Croatia.
  Dr. Snow has confirmed the identities of the following people from skeletal remains: John F. Kennedy, the men who fought in General Custer's last stand in 1876, Dr. Joseph Mengele, serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Egyptian boy King Tutankhamun, and victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
  He teaches at the University of Oklahoma and sometimes lectures to forensic science organizations and law enforcement personnel.
• Gordon Wasserman

  Gordon Wasserman is an advisor to the Commissioner of Police, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  He was a Don in Economics at Oxford University, and Head of Information Technology in the British Home Office during the Thatcher government.
• Paul Van Zyl

  Paul Van Zyl is the Program Director of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Previously he's served as the Project Director at the Transitional Justice and Accountability Program at Columbia University. He was also the Executive Secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and oversaw the Transition and Reconciliation Unit at the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, South Africa.
  He received his BA and LL.B from the University of Witwaterstrand and a Master of Laws from the University of Leiden and New York University. He has taught at Columbia law school and New York University.

Board of Directors and Officers

The Board of Directors of the IICI is the governing body of the Institute. It is composed of experts from around the world, and from disciplines relevant to both teaching and conducting investigations into serious violations of international humanitarian law. Military officers, human rights investigators, academics, criminal investigators, and experts in international law have joined forces to create a new approach to the investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

• Delia Chatoor

  Delia Chatoor has been the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross office in Trinidad and Tobago since 1999. She is involved in the dissemination of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights to National Red Cross Societies, political authorities and armed and security forces.
  Ms. Chatoor is a Foreign Service Officer on leave from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trinidad and Tobago. She earned her Master of Laws at University College of London.
• Hina Jilani

  Hina Jilani is a lawyer of the Supreme Court of Pakistan experienced in constitutional and human rights litigation. A founder of the first women’s law firm and legal aid centre in Pakistan, she is also a Founding Member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and has been a special representative of the UN Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, a member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, and a member of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism, appointed by the International Commission of Jurists.
  She serves as Chair of the International Council for Human Rights Policy, Geneva, has written extensively on human rights and democracy, and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards.
• Gerald Gray

  Gerald Gray is a clinical social worker who was in the private practice of psychotherapy for 20 years. In 1986 he founded Survivors International, a San Francisco Center to provide clinical and social services to refugee survivors of political torture. He was president of the board of directors for 10 years, and was a psychotherapist to torture survivors from many countries.
  In 1998, he founded and became Executive Director of The Center for Justice and Accountability, an organization dedicated to ending the impunity of human rights violators. The Center supports various projects, ranging from tracking violators in the U.S. and preparing cases for criminal prosecutions by the Department of Justice, to suing violators in civil court for recompense, to initially sponsoring the Institute for International Investigation (now IICI).
• William D. Haglund

  William D. Haglund was Director of the International Forensic Program for Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based Non-Governmental Organization until he retired in 2006. Areas where he has been involved in forensic missions include Central America, Africa, Former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka and East Timor. He was Chief Medical Investigator of the King county Medical Examiner's Office, Seattle, Washington, for several years. In December 1995 he took a position with the United Nations as Senior Forensic Advisor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
  Dr. Haglund teaches medical legal death investigators through the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission. He received his B.A. degree in Biology from the University of California at Irvine and his Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Washington.
  Dr. Haglund's publications are in the areas of outdoor scene processing for human remains, taphonomy, and human identification. They include two books: Taphonomy: the Postmortem Fate of Human Remains and Medico Legal Death Investigator Training Manual. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and has served as an affiliate member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Medical Examiners. He was also a three-time president of the Washington State Coroner/Medical Examiner's Association.
• Roelof Haveman

  Roelof Haveman is an associate professor of international criminal law and criminal procedure at Leiden University (The Netherlands) and the Program Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies (Leiden University Campus / The Hague).
  Since the defence of his PhD thesis on trafficking in human beings, he specialized in supranational criminal law. Haveman's publications are in the areas of trafficking in humans and prostitution, the principle of legality and supranational criminal law, and cover such topics as prosecutorial discretion, gender crimes, legality, evidence, fair trial and the sui generis character of the supranational penal system. Haveman has participated in many teaching and training activities for scholars and practitioners in the field of supranational criminal law, both in The Netherlands and abroad.
• Raymond McGrath (President)

  Raymond McGrath, President, has been a private investigator in San Francisco, California since 1978. During his career, he has conducted investigations into murder, arson, child kidnapping, rape, extortion, and fraud.After learning his trade under the tutelage of well-known investigator Jack Webb, he opened his own firm in 1988. His work has encompassed both civil and criminal litigation. McGrath has international investigative experience, having worked in France, Hong Kong, mainland China and Ireland. He has been qualified as an expert in investigations in a California state court proceeding.
  In 1999, McGrath participated in a panel on training and investigation at the Hague Appeal for Peace. Since that time he has helped to organize the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.
• Lt. Gen. Gerry McMahon

  Lt.Gen. Gerry McMahon retired as Chief of Staff of the Irish Defense Forces in 1998 after a career of 45 years at home and overseas. Commissioned into the Infantry he served in a wide selection of command and staff appointments at home, including being a logistics officer at Western Command Headquarters, an instructor at the Irish Military College, Commanding Officer of the 5 Infantry Battalion and an operations staff officer at Defense Headquarters.
  Towards the end of his career he served as Commandant of the Military College, Defense Forces Quartermaster-General and Deputy Chief of Staff before becoming the Chief of Staff for his final four years of service. He had wide experience on overseas peacekeeping missions throughout his career, serving at various times in the Congo, Cyprus, Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. He also spent a year working in the Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations in UN HQ New York.
  Since retirement he is enjoying his leisure time. He writes for the Irish Times and Examiner newspapers and dabbles in the lecture circuit. He is also involved in some projects that interest him, one of these being the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.
• Bernard O'Donnell

  Bernard O'Donnell has over twenty five years' experience in national and international investigations. During his eight years with the ICTY, Bernie was an Investigations Team Leader in charge of several of the largest and most complex investigations, resulting in the indictment of key leadership officials for crimes in Bosnia, including Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, General Momcilo Perisic, and the head of the State Security Service in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Jovica Stanisic.
  Bernie later worked with the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme in New York and led a number of major international inquiries. He has extensive experience in leading field missions, interviewing witnesses, interviewing suspects, management of exhumations and the management of investigation teams.
  Bernie is currently an Assistant Secretary with the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. He is in charge the department's Investigations Branch with offices across Australia.
• Nancy Pemberton (Secretary and Treasurer)

  Nancy Pemberton is the owner of a private investigative firm in San Francisco. A member of the State Bar of California since 1985, Pemberton practiced law in federal and state courts for several years before becoming a private investigator. In 1992, she founded the investigative firm of Mason, Tully & Pemberton, which specialized in criminal defense and complex civil litigation. Pemberton has developed an emphasis in capital case investigation, particularly in the area of mitigation evidence, and has worked on both federal and state capital cases.
  She is an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University Law School and a regular guest lecturer for the litigation clinic at the University of San Francisco Law School. For the last seven years, she has been a speaker at the annual Capital Case Defense Seminar sponsored by California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and California Public Defenders Association.
  Pemberton earned her B.A. in Economics from San Francisco State University, graduating summa cum laude. She attended Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley where she was named to the Order of the Coif. Pemberton currently serves on the board of directors of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
• Heather Ryan

  Heather Ryan is the Open Society Justice Intiative’s representative in Cambodia, monitoring the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge trials). Previously she was the Associate Director of the Global Green Grants Fund in Boulder, Colorado USA, which makes global grants to grass roots organizations in the developing world. She was the project director for the Carr Center Domestic Human Rights Project. She joined the Carr Center in May of 2000 after spending a year and a half working with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as the liaison in The Hague for the Coalition for International Justice.
  Prior to that she worked for the American Bar Association's Center and East European Law Initiative doing judicial reform work in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. For 18 years, she was a partner with the law firm of Hutchinson Black and Cook, LLC in Boulder, Colorado. She graduated from the University of Colorado School of Law and served as a law clerk for the Honorable William E. Doyle of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
• William Schabas

  William Schabas, Order of Canada, Chair of the Board, is professor of human rights law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. He holds an MA degree in history from University of Toronto and an LLD from the University of Montreal.
  Professor Schabas is the author of 12 books and more than 90 articles in the area of international human rights, including The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law (Cambridge, 1997) and Genocide in International Law (Cambridge, 2000). He has frequently participated in human rights fact-finding missions for international NGOs such as Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights.
• Desmond Travers

  Desmond Travers is a recently retired Colonel of the Army of the Irish Defence Forces. His last appointment was as Commandant of its Military College. In a career spanning over forty years, he served in various command and instructional appointments in the Infantry Corps. He was a founder of two of the Forces' teaching and training institutions.
  He also served in command of troops and in key operational appointments with various UN and EU peace support missions. These were in the Middle-East (Cyprus, Lebanon) and in the Former Yugoslavia (Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina).He is a student of military history and his works are published internationally from time to time.

Staff

The Staff of the Institute are responsible for the day-to day operations of the organization.

• John Ralston (Executive Director)

  John Ralston, Executive Director, was the Chief of Investigations, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2001. A former homicide detective in Australia, he spent several years investigating Nazi war criminals.
  Mr. Ralston was a foundation member of the Office of the Prosecutor for the ICTY. Joining as an Investigation Team Leader in 1994 he was responsible for establishing the tribunal's first investigations and preparing standard operating procedures for use through the OTP. More recently he was Chief Investigator for the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry for Darfur and is a senior adviser to the ICC Assembly of State Parties Justice Rapid Reaction Initiative.
• Anna Coulouris (Head of Office, the Hague)

  Anna Coulouris is the Institute's Head of Office in The Hague. She joined the IICI in June 2008. She is responsible for all Institute administration and liaison in Europe.
  Ms Coulouris has worked in the field of human rights for more than 12 years. She began her career working for Amnesty International and in the past ten years has worked as a human rights officer for the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Burundi. She participated in the 5th International Investigator Course in 2005.

The staff of the IICI are assisted by a range of expert consultants hired on an as needs basis.