Members of Truth Commission

Klick on the names for the bios

  • Professor Maurice Copithorne(Canada)President of the Iran Tribunal Truth Commission Professor Copithorne’s impressive career spans six decades, during which he specialized in international law. After being called to the BC Bar in 1956, Professor Copithorne joined the Canadian Foreign Service. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1986 to take a visiting professorship position with the UBC Faculty of Law and has been with the Faculty ever since. In addition to teaching, he has held a variety of external appointments including United Nations Special Representative on the Human Rights Situation in Iran (1995-2002). Copithorne has received several awards and honours including being appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1981, the Great Trekker Award from the University of British Columbia Alma Mater Society in 1997, and the Renata Shearer Award for “outstanding contributions to human rights” in 2000.
    Professor Maurice Copithorne
  • Dr Louise Asmal(South Africa)Writer, left activist and anti-apartheid campaigner. Louise Asmal has spent most of her life defending human equality and diginty. Born and brought up in England, her first job was as administrative secretary for the National Council for Civil Liberties in London. After she married a prominent South African professor of Law Kader Asmal, she worked briefly for an Algerian journal, Révolution Africaine, before, unable to go to South Africa, they moved to Ireland. There she helped set up and run the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. She was its honorary secretary for some 25 years. In 2007 she received an honorary doctorate in law from Trinity College Dublin for her work with the IAAM and the Canon Collins Trust. She continues to take a keen interest in human rights and sits on the board of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation as well as the FHR. Louise is co- author of "Reconcilation Through Truth-Reckoning of Appartied´s Criminal Governance” and” Apartheid South Africa”.
    Dr Louise Asmal
  • Professor William A. Schabas (Irland) Professor of human rights law and criminal law. Professor William A. Schabas is the Chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Schabas is the author of twenty-one books dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law, including The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute , Introduction to the International Criminal Court, Genocide in International Law, The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International, International Human Rights, The Death Penalty as Cruel Treatment and Torture. He is President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, President of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association and chair of the International Institute for Criminal Investigation. He served as one of three international members of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
    Professor William A. Schabas
  • Professor Daniel Turp (Canada) Professor of International Law. Daniel Turp started teaching at the Université de Montréal since 1982. Since then, he has taught several law courses at the University of Paris, The International Institute of Human Rights in and Harvard University. He has also been a director of studies at the International law academy in The Hague (1995). Daniel has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency, and was called as an expert for the Bélanger-Campeau Commission on Quebec's constitutional future. In 2005, he proposed a project for a Quebec constitution and he signed the Manifeste pour un Québec solidaire (Manifesto for Quebec solidarity). He has published many articles on Quebec sovereignty and its constitutional implications.
    Professor Daniel Turp
  • Professor Eric DAVID (Belgian) Professor of International Criminal Law, president of the centre for International Law of ULB since 2003. « Professor Emeritus » since October 1st, 2009. He has lectured at the Free University of Brussels (U.L.B.) for the following courses : Public International Law, International Institutional Law, International Criminal Law and Law of Armed Conflicts. Eric David is author of Two prize winning books: “Mercenaries and International Volunteers in Public International Law” and “Principles of the Law of Armed Conflicts”. Member of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. Legal opinions for the UN, Belgian and foreign lawyers, NGOs. Member of fact-finding missions and arbitration commissions. Eric David is legal adviser to Russell Tribunal inquiry into the legal ramifications of Israel's human rights and humanitarian law violations in Palestine. He is Visiting Professor in numerous foreign universities.
    Professor Eric DAVID
  • Anne Burley was born and educated in New Zealand. She came to London in 1959 and has lived there ever since, apart from a year working for the United Nations in Croatia (see below). She joined the staff of Amnesty International (AI) in January 1968 and worked for that organization until she retired in 2002. She was AI’s researcher on many countries at different times, including the United Kingdom and the United States of America, but her longest periods as a researcher were on Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, and Iran, of which she was AI’s researcher from 1972 until 1984. She led two Amnesty International missions to Iran, in November 1978 and April 1979. From 1980 Anne Burley was the Director of AI’s Europe Regional Department, until shortly before her retirement, she acted as Special Advisor to the new Secretary General of AI. During a year’s leave from AI in 1997-98, she set up a Human Rights unit in UNPROFOR. Immediately following that, she was for six months the Head of the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s Office in Croatia.
    Ms Anne Burley