Hans-Peter Kaul who was seen as friendly to President Uhuru at the ICC has died.
The court in a communication said the former Judge passed away on 21 July 2014. He had recently resigned from his judgeship duties at the ICC due to ill-health.
Kaul was born on 25 July 1943 in Glashütte, Saxony. He spent part of his childhood in Glashütte and Zwickau, Saxony, in East-Germany, then Soviet occupation zone. In 1952, he fled with his parents to West-Germany.
After his military duty from 1963-1967, reaching the rank of captain, he studied law at Heidelberg University, where he completed his First State Examination in 1971. He then attended the École Nationale d’Administration in Paris from 1972-1973. He passed his Second State Examination in Law (equivalent to admission to the bar) in Heidelberg in 1975.
Hans Peter Kaul joined the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law at Heidelberg from 1973-1975, as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Hermann Mosler (who later was from 1976 to 1985 Judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague). In 1974, Kaul attended the Academy of International Law in The Hague.
In 1975, Hans Peter Kaul[2] entered the German diplomatic service. He served as Consul and Press Attaché at the German Embassy to Norway from 1977 to 1980. From 1980 to 1984, he worked for the Division for UN Affairs (Security Council, General Assembly) at the Federal Foreign Office in Bonn, Germany. He was sent then to Tel Aviv, Israel where he served as Press Counsellor and Spokesman at the German Embassy from 1984 to 1986. Between 1986 and 1990, he served as Political Counsellor at the German Embassy to the United States, Washington. In 1990, back in Bonn, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Division for Near Eastern Affairs at the Federal Foreign Office. In 1993, he returned to the United States as First Counsellor for the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations, New York, during Germany’s non-permanent membership in the Security Council (1995/1996). From 1996 until 2002, he served as Head of the Division for International Law of the Federal Foreign Office in Bonn.
From 1996 to 2003, Kaul was Head of the German delegation in the negotiation process of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He played a key role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In 2002, he became Ambassador and Foreign Office Commissioner for the International Criminal Court.
Hans Peter Kaul was elected as the first German judge of the International Criminal Court in 2003,[3] then re-elected in 2006 for a second term of nine years.[4] Judge Kaul is a member of the Pre-Trial Division, assigned to both Pre-Trial Chamber I and Pre-Trial Chamber II, dealing with the situations in Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur (Sudan), the Central African Republic, Kenya and Mali.[5]