Antonio Cassese | International-law expert
Antonio Cassese, an international-law expert who served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, died Friday at his home in Florence, Italy, after a long battle with cancer.
Antonio Cassese, an international-law expert who served as first president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and later as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, died Friday at his home in Florence, Italy, after a long battle with cancer.
Dr. Cassese was born in 1937 in Italy. The Lebanon tribunal did not release his exact age.
"For members of the tribunal he was the maestro, whose towering ability as a jurist and a statesman was equaled by the immense personal warmth and humanity which made him our dear friend," said David Baragwanath, who succeeded Dr. Cassese less than two weeks ago as president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon after Dr. Cassese stepped down for health reasons. He was an appeals judge at the tribunal at the time of his death.
He guided the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia during its first years of operation, from 1993 to 1997, and led the United Nations' International Commission of Inquiry into Genocide in Darfur in 2004.
Dr. Cassese was professor of international law at the University of Florence from 1975 until 2008, and was a visiting fellow at Oxford University's All Souls College from 1979 to 1980. - AP