ARUSHA (Tanzania), May 25: Judges on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have chosen Pakistan’s Khalida Rashid Khan as the court’s next president, the tribunal said in a statement on Wednesday.

Ms Khan, 61, will assume her new duties on 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 the UN Security Council in November 1994 to investigate and try the individuals suspected of being the main architects of the 1994 genocide against Tutsis and Hutus.

Ms 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.

Ms Khan worked as a judge on the Peshawar High Court, before joining the ICTR.—AFP