Association du Barreau près la Cour Pénale Internationale

Anand A. Shah is an American attorney, and presently Associate Counsel on the team of the Common Legal Representative of Victims in the Abd-Al-Rahman (“Ali Kushayb”) trial before the ICC. Prior to this he assisted in the representation of numerous defendants in the Darfur, Kenya and Libya Situations before the ICC, as well as in cases before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Over previous ICCBA terms he has served on the Executive Council and as Secretary of the ICCBA, as well as on the Professional Standards Advisory, Amicus, Legal Advisory and Counsel Support Staff committees. He has also taken a leading role on ICCBA working groups addressing matters of legal aid, taxation, and work place harassment.

Anta Guissé has been a practising lawyer at the Paris Bar in France since 1999. Her working language is French, while she also speaks English. As a criminal defence lawyer, she has appeared regularly before national criminal courts and the Assize Court in particular. In addition, Ms Guissé has several years of experience appearing before the international jurisdictions. Between 2002 and 2010, she worked with several different defence teams before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, firstly as a legal assistant and then as counsel. In 2010, Ms Guissé had an assignment in a team of Legal Representatives of Victims before the International Criminal Court. She was also Defence Counsel at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Since 2012, Ms Guissé has been acting as an international lawyer for former Chairman KHIEU Samphân before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and is currently Counsel for Mr. Yekatom at the ICC. Ms Guissé also regularly presents at training workshops for colleagues on the subject of international criminal justice.

Cécile is currently Legal Assisant in the Defence team of Mr Al Hassan before the International Criminal Court. She previously worked as a case manager and legal assistant in the Defence Team of Mr. Jean-Pierre Bemba at the ICC from 2013 to 2018, and in the Defence Team of Mr. Ndagijimana in the Nzabonimpa et al. case at the UN-IRMCT from 2019 to 2021. She was also an associate legal officer at the OPCD in 2021 and a consultant for IDLO from 2017 to 2021. She obtained a Masters from the Université La Sorbonne (France) as well as a LL.M from Leiden University. She was previously a member of the Amicus Committee (2019-2021) and of the Counsel Support Staff Committee (2021-2022) of the ICCBA.

Iain Edwards is a barrister at the Bar of England and Wales (practising since September 2001). Since 2009, the focus of his practice has been defending in international criminal cases. He has represented, or assisted in the representation of, clients in a total of nine cases before the ICTR, STL, IRMCT and ICC. He is currently associate Counsel for Mr Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (Darfur) before the ICC, and Counsel for Mr Alphonse Nteziryayo before the IRMCT. He was also ad hoc associate Counsel for Mr Al-Hassan (Mali) towards the end of the Prosecution case, and during the victims’ case, before the ICC. Iain is the current Vice-President for Defence of the ICCBA, and a member of the Defence Committee. In 2016-2017, he was chair of the inaugural Training Committee and Professional Standards Advisory Committee. He is the alternate member of the ICC Disciplinary Board. Iain works just as comfortably in French as he does in English, an important advantage given the often multilingual nature of the work of the Court.

Rangajeeva Wimalasena has served as the Chair of the Professional Standards Advisory Committee of ICCBA, and he is also the ICCBA focal point for Asia Pacific States. He has been a judicial officer for the last twenty years in three Commonwealth jurisdictions in the Asia Pacific region. He started his career in 1999 as a Prosecutor in Sri Lanka and later joined the bench in 2003 as a Magistrate. Having served as a Magistrate as well as a District Court Judge in Sri Lanka, he joined the Fiji Judiciary in 2009. He was appointed a judge of the High Court of Fiji in 2018 and was the first judge of the Anti-corruption Division of the High Court of Fiji. In 2022 he joined the Nauru Court of Appeal as a Justice of Appeal. Apart from his judicial career, he serves as a director and board member in a number of not-for-profit organizations in Australia on a pro bono basis. He is an accredited mediator by the Singapore and Fiji Mediation Centres. His educational background includes a Master of Laws in International Human Rights, Children's and Women's Rights, and a Bachelor of Laws. He also has a Graduate Certificate in Policy and Governance from Queensland University of Technology.

Megan Hirst is an Australian lawyer, practicing from the London bar. She has been working at and before the ICC since 2009, with a particular focus on victim participation. At the ICC she has undertaken victim representation in the Ongwen Case, the Bangladesh/Myanmar Situation and the Afghanistan Situation. From 2019 until 2022 she was International Lead Co-Lawyer for victims participating as civil parties in Case 002/02 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Megan was previously a legal officer in the Registries of the ICC and the STL, primarily working on victim participation. Megan has served for two terms on the ICCBA’s Executive Council and Victims’ Committee, and as Vice-President for victims (2019-2021). Since then, she has remained active in providing input to the ICCBA especially on questions of legal aid and services for victims’ counsel. 

Audrey MATEO is currently a Legal adviser in the Defence team at the ICC.

In 1997, she completed her law studies in Aix en Provence and Montpellier, France. She then studied in Cape Town, South Africa where she obtained an LL.M. in human rights and international law at the University of the Western Cape. Early in her career, as a legal analyst and agent at the European Commission in Brussels, she worked in the task-Force on the Future on the European Union. She then worked as a Legal officer for 10 years in Chambers at the ICTY and in Chambers at the ICC in the Katanga trial. She lived two years Cambodia where she worked as both a legal and pro bono consultant for human rights NGOs and supporting victims lawyers before the ECCC. She was also a consultant at the at the KSC-SPO. Since 2021, Audrey works as an UNHCR judge at the Cour Nationale du droit d’ Asile in Paris, and she also gives trainings as a consultant on the prevention of sexual harassment at work. As for her current position she is a Legal Advisor with the Abd-Al-Rahman Defence team at the ICC. Finally, she has a passion for drama; she is an actress and produces shows for an amateur theatre company in The Hague.

Gregory Townsend started as a deputy public defender in Los Angeles. In 1998, he joined the ICTR, where he clerked for a judge and worked as a prosecuting trial attorney. He later became a prosecutor for the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and ICTY. He served as Head of Office for the SCSL in The Hague. He joined the STL in 2010 as chief legal advisor to the Prosecutor. From 2014 to 2018, he served as Chief of the Registry’s Court Support Services Section for ICTY & IRMCT, where he oversaw witness protection, court operations, judicial records and legal aid. He is a professor of international law and on the list of counsel to represent victims before the KSC and ICC. He was previously duty counsel to Mr. Mokom before the ICC.