(Trinidad Guardian) High Court judge Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona has been elected a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Hague. The elections took place at the United Nations in New York on Monday. Carmona, 58, who was nominated for the position by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, was also the Caricom representative in the elections which saw judges from 18 countries worldwide, competing for one of six places on the ICC. Carmona won the office in the first ballot in the Assembly of States Parties, consisting of 119 countries, with 72 votes. He placed second to Miriam Defensor Santiago, the first Filipino and Asian from a developing country to serve as ICC judge. She garnered 79 votes. Only 70 votes were needed.
He and five other judges will take up office on March 11, 2012. The appointment, which is for nine years, means that Carmona, who has been on the Bench since 2004, will have to give up his position as a judge and migrate to the Hague. Among his more notable cases are the first successful prosecution in the British Commonwealth of senior magistrate Patrick Jagessar for corruption and the first successful prosecution at Court of Appeal in the West Indies of Farouk Ali, a Justice of the Peace, for corruption. Carmona is at present presiding in the San Fernando Supreme Court over the trial in which Marlon King is accused of killing his stepdaughter Amy Annamunthodo.