Carmel Agius

Agius was called to the bar in 1970. For 7 years, he worked in private practice primarily on civil and commercial litigation, advising the Times of Malta and Bank of Valletta.^[1] He was appointed a magistrate in 1977 and a judge of the superior courts in 1982. He served on the court of appeal and constitutional court of Malta, and was acting chief justice on several occasions. He retired from the Maltese judiciary in August 2010.^[2][3][4]

From 1996 to 1998, Agius represented the government of Malta at the meetings of the United Nations preparatory committee for a permanent international criminal court. In 1998, he headed the delegation of Malta at the Rome diplomatic conference and signed the Rome Statute on behalf of Malta. He also headed the Maltese delegations at the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and the Treatment of Offenders until 2000. From 1999 to 2008, he was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.^[4]

In 2001, Agius was elected as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). As a trial chamber judge, he presided over major cases, such as the multi-accused trial of Vujadin Popović and others for the Srebrenica massacre.^[3] In 2010, he was appointed to the appeals chamber for the ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He was the vice-president of the ICTY from 2011 to 2015 and its final president from 2015 to 2017.^[5]

Agius has been a judge of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals since its commencement in 2012, serving as its president from 2019 to 2022.^[4][6][7]

In 2015, Agius was appointed an officer of the National Order of Merit of Malta.^[3]