Serge Brammertz


Serge, Baron Brammertz is a Belgian jurist. He serves as the chief prosecutor for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals since 2016. He also served as the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2008 until its closure in 2017.

Biography

Brammertz was born in 1962 in Eupen and is a member of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
Brammertz was Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from 2002 to 2007. He was a federal prosecutor in Belgium from 1997 to 2002 and assisted the Council of Europe as an expert with a mandate to "set up a mechanism for evaluating and applying nationally international undertakings concerning the fight against organized crime". He also served on the Justice and Internal Affairs committee of the European Commission and for the International Organization for Migration, leading research studies on human trafficking and cross-border corruption in Central Europe and the Balkans.
On 11 January 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him head of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. As such, he replaced Detlev Mehlis, who stepped down in January 2006.
On 1 January 2008, Brammertz resigned to succeed Carla Del Ponte as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He stayed on that position until the Tribunal's closure on 31 December 2017.
Also, on 1 March 2016, he succeeded Hassan Bubacar Jallow as the chief prosecutor for the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.
Brammertz is also a former professor of law at the University of Liège. He is a native German speaker and also speaks fluent Dutch, French and English.

Other activities

In October 2013, Brammertz was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies. The nomination was supported by Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa association, a Srebrenica massacre survivors’ campaign group.
By Royal Decree of 2 April 2014, Brammertz was ennobled as a non hereditary baron by King Philippe of Belgium.
Opining on the importance of international transparency, Brammertz was quoted "Corruption, above all else, is a question of moral fitness."