Susan L. Somers

Susan L. Somers "has recently retired as a senior prosecuting trial attorney at the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. For 10 years, she has prosecuted and investigated crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions involving political, military and police leadership and their subordinates. To date, she has obtained convictions as senior trial counsel against five defendants in the Omarska concentration camp case; against two senior military officers for deaths, injury and destruction arising out of shelling of Dubrovnik's Old Town; and against two political and military leaders involved in a widespread and systematic persecutory campaign in Central Bosnia. Ms. Somers has also supervise the legal proceedings involved in the Prosecutor's motions to transfer 12 ICTY cases with 20 defendants to the national courts in republics of the former Yugoslavia, as part of the Security Council's mandated ICTY completion strategy.

"In 1996, she severed as a technical advisor to the International Criminal Training and Assistance Programme (I.C.I.T.A.P.) in Sarajevo, where she analyzed capacity of the institutions of the criminal justice system of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of post-conflict infrastructure following implementation of Dayton Peace Accords and prepared a feasibility study.

"A public prosecutor in the United States for 14 years, Ms. Somers holds a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, a Law Degree from Cleveland State University and a Bachelors of Arts in Russian Language from Oberlin College. She is a member of the Bar in Florida, New York, Ohio, and the District of Columbia. Ms. Somers regularly lectures to judges, prosecutors and military and political officials of the former Yugoslavia as part of ICTY Outreach Programme."


 * Advisory Panel, Conflict Analysis Research Centre