Christoph Flügge

Christoph Flügge (born 14 July 1947) is a German jurist and judge. From June 2001 to February 2007, he was Secretary of State in the Department of Justice of the State of Berlin. On 18 September 2008, he was appointed permanent judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). As a result of controversial but there have been calls for his resignation from several Bosnian victims' groups.

Career Flügge studied law from 1967 to 1973 at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Bonn. He graduated with the first state exam in 1973 and the second in 1976. He worked as an assistant for an SPD Member of Parliament during his studies from 1969 to 1971, and was employed at a West Berlin law firm in 1973.

In 1976 he became secretary to Senator Kurt Neubauer (SPD). In 1977 he became a public prosecutor, and from 1978, he worked in the Berlin Department of Justice. He was appointed as criminal judge at the Berlin Amtsgericht in 1983. In 1989, he returned to the Berlin Department of Justice. In 2001, he was appointed Secretary of State by Senator Wolfgang Wieland. He was dismissed as Secretary by Senator Gisela von der Aue in February 2007.

At the proposal of the Federal Ministry of Justice of Germany, he was appointed as permanent judge at the ICTY by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2008.

He was a member of the trial chamber in the case against Serbia's former interior minister Vlastimir Đorđević and of the trial chamber in the case against Radovan Karadžić; however, he was removed from the latter case after controversial comments. It is not clear why he was removed from the case. On 27 May 2011, he was appointed as one of the three judges of the trial chamber in the case against Ratko Mladić.

In January 2019, Flügge resigned from his position at the ICTY, citing threats from both the Turkish and the US government, which were showing that they wouldn't accept the authority of an international court.

He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Accusations of genocide denial In 2009, Christoph Flügge made controversial that were criticized for denying the Bosnian Genocide. Flügge claimed the term genocide was "unnecessary" while describing the Srebrenica genocide, which has been determined to be genocide by the United Nations and the ICTY itself. The Congress of North American Bosniaks demanded that Flügge be removed from his position as judge, stating that the organisation was "shocked and confounded" by his statements "in which he openly questions the Srebrenica genocide", accusing him of genocide denial. The organisation demanded "a complete retraction of the statement" and "a full apology to all the victims of the genocide who have been hurt by this statement, at a time when they are getting ready to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the genocide and bury more victims who are still being identified from the many mass graves".

Flügge was removed from the Radovan Karadžić case following the protest by Bosniak victims' groups. The organisations were joined in their protest against Flügge by the Congress of North American Bosniaks, which criticized Flügge of his "refusal to apologize for the comments and publicly recognize the classification of Srebrenica Genocide". In a joint letter from the Congress of North American Bosniaks, the Institute for Genocide Research Canada, and the Australian Council of Bosnian Herzegovina Organizations, the organizations requested that Flügge be removed from the Mladić case, stating that the "International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has already confirmed, in several cases including the 2007 ruling against Serbia and Montenegro, the classification of the murder of more than 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica as genocide. This fact has also been recognized by organizations and governments across the world, including the U.S Congress in resolutions 199 and 134 on genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Judge Flügge is therefore unable to show impartiality to the case and was in a clear violation of The Hague’s Rule 15(A). His statement also directly violated previous ICTY rulings which confirmed that the atrocities committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica constitute genocide, in accordance with the definition from the Geneva Convention of 1949."

Despite Flügge's claim that the Srebrenica Genocide was not a genocide, Ratko Mladić has been charged by prosecutor Serge Brammertz with the crime of genocide.

Private life

Flügge is married.

Publications

DDR-Strafvollzug. Recht statt Drill. In: Neue Kriminalpolitik, 1990 Alter Geist - neue Probleme. Strafvollzug nach der Wiedervereinigung. In: Neue Kriminalpolitik, 1991 Assessment of the Ukrainian Prison System (Lakes/Fliigge/Philip/Nestorovic-Report), Council of Europe, Strasbourg 1997 (UKR V.B. 4 1) ... und sie bewegt sich doch. Debatte um die Todesstrafe in der Ukraine. In: ai-Journal 6/1997 Berlin zeigt Mut zur Reform. In: Neue Kriminalpolitik, 1/1998 Untersuchungshaftanstalten des MfS. In: Strafvollzug in den neuen Bundesländern. Kriminologische Zentralstelle, Wiesbaden 1999 Reassessment of the Needs of the Ukrainian Prison System. Council of Europe, Strasbourg 2004 (SG/Ukraine 1REV)