Pakistani judge will head Rwanda tribunal

Khan second woman appointed to the chair of the tribunal since it began in 2001.

ARUSHA, TANZANIA: Judges on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda have chosen the Pakistani Khalida Rashid Khan as the court's next president, the tribunal said in a statement Wednesday.

Khan, 61, will assume her new duties Friday, replacing Dennis Byron, who will finish his second two-year term as president of the Tanzania-based tribunal on Thursday.

The ICTR was established by a UN Security Council resolution in November 1994 to investigate and try the individuals suspected of being the main architects of the 1994 genocide against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Khan, who joined the court in August 2003 and has served as vice president since May 2007, is the second woman appointed to the president's chair.

South African Navi Pillay, now the UN high commissioner for human rights, was the first.

Khan worked as a judge on the High Court in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, before joining the ICTR.

In another statement the court said it would deliver a verdict on June 24 in its longest running case involving six people accused of inciting the rape of Tutsi women during the genocide.

The case, opened in April 2001, is considered one of the toughest for prosecutors to prove guilt.