Mohamed Chande Othman
 Justice Othman    (Judge) | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | 1 January 1952 Tanganyika Territory | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Dar es Salaam, Webster University | ||||||||||||||||||||
Former Chief Justice of Tanzania,
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Mohamed Chande Othman is the former Chief Justice of Tanzania, a position he held from 28 December 2010 to 18 January 2017 after serving as both a High Court and Appeal Court Judge.
In December 2014 a Resolution was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly, authorising the Secretary-General to appoint a UN Panel of Experts to investigate new evidence about the 1961 plane crash in which UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed. Chande Othman was appointed to head the panel. In June 2015 Justice Othman submitted his report to UNSG Ban Ki-Moon, who stated that ‘further inquiry or investigation would be necessary to finally establish the facts’.[1]
Following the adoption of a further Resolution 71/260 by the UNGA in December 2016, Justice Othman was selected in 2017 by Secretary-General António Guterres as Eminent Person with the mandate to review potential new information, assess its probative value, and determine the scope that any further investigation should take. The Judge has submitted two further reports to the UNSG; his report of 2019 can be found here. Justice Othman is continuing the investigation and is expected to submit his final report to the UNSG in 2022.[2]
International prosecutor
Justice Othman’s previous experience includes that of Prosecutor General of East Timor, Chief of Prosecutions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Senior Legal Adviser to the Prosecutor of the ICTR. In addition, he has also worked with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
UN official
Under the flag of the United Nations, Justice Othman has served as:
- Head of the UN Independent Panel of Experts, charged with the assessment and examination of new information relating to the tragic death of the former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.
- Member of the UN Human Rights Council’s High-Level Commission of Inquiry into the Situation in Lebanon following the Israel-Lebanon Armed Conflict in 2006.
- The UN Human Rights Council‘s Independent Expert on the human rights situation in the Sudan (2009-2010).
Publications
His publications include books and peer-reviewed papers on International Humanitarian Law, Refugee Law, Criminal Law and Evidence, and Peacekeeping.[3]
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Dag Hammarskjöld - US, UK and South Africa still withholding crucial information | Article | 10 October 2019 | Ludwig De Braeckeleer | “Communications sent from the CX-52 cryptographic machine used by Dag Hammarskjöld appear to have been intercepted by British and United States signals and intelligence agencies as a result of a secret interception and decryption setting that those agencies held that enabled them to intercept surreptitiously.” |
| Document:UN Wants to Know If Spy Agencies Hold Answer to Dag Hammarskjöld’s Death | Article | 15 July 2017 | Alan Cowell Rick Gladstone | After 56 years and many investigations, there is new hope that secrets lurking in Western intelligence archives could solve "the biggest whodunnit" in United Nations history: the mysterious death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld... |
