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International experts

Commission Members

Chairman of the Commission

Raphael Israeli

Raphael Israeli was born in Fes, Marocco, currently teaching Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern History at Hebrew University. Graduate of Hebrew University in History and Arabic Literature, Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Since 1974 Lecturer and then Professor of Islamic and Chinese History at Hebrew University, with sabbatical periods spent at York University in Toronto, the University of Pittsburg’s Semester at Sea program, Harvard University, Boston University, Australian National University in Canberra, Melbourne University, and Naruto University in Japan. Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s. Author of over 50 research books and a dozen edited books, and some 100 scholarly articles in the fields of Islamic radicalism, Islamic terrorism, the Modern Middle East, Islam in China and Asia and Europe.

Vice-Chairman of the Commission

Victor Bezruchenko

Viktor Bezruchenko was born on 10 October 1953 in Moscow, Russia. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree at Military Institute in Moscow and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in 1980. The span of his Army service is 14 years. Between 1987 and 1989 he had a tour of duty as a Military Observer with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in the Middle East, and between 1993 and 1994 he was Chief of Staff UNPROFOR Sector Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1994 he retired from the Army in the rank of Colonel. Between 1994 and 2002, he held a post of Civil Affairs Officer with United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and worked in Gornji Vakuf, Sarajevo, and Brčko, being the longest-serving UN officer in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Between 2002 and 2019 he served as a military analyst with the United Nations International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and as United Nations security officer in Iraq, Sudan, New York, and Afghanistan. In 1993, he attended a course on UN peace-keeping operations at NATO School at Oberammergau. In 2007 he took a course in International Criminal Law at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Viktor Bezruchenko also holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Sarajevo University, BiH, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kyiv, Ukraine. He is the author of about 20 publications on international law and military history. He speaks Russian, English, French, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, and Ukrainian.

Member of the Commission

Darko Tanasković

Born on January 4, 1948, in Zagreb (Croatia). He graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Department of Oriental Studies, in 1970. In 1972, he obtained his Master’s Degree at the same Department, with a Master’s Dissertation The Autobiography of “Usama ibn Munqidh” (Linguistic Features), and a Ph.D. (1979), with a thesis Arabic Language in Contemporary Tunisia (Diglossia and Bilingualism). Darko Tanasković was teaching at the Faculty of Philology from 1971 to 2018 when he retired as Full Professor at the Department of Oriental Studies. Prof. Tanasković published over 800 papers and research work reports including the following books: Arabic Poetry (1977), The Sufism (with Ivan Šop, 1981, 2011), Arabic Language in Contemporary Tunisia (1982), The Contrastive Analysis of the Serbo-Croat and Arabic Languages (1982), In dialogue with Islam (1992), At the East of the West (together with M. Jevtić, 2000), The Islam and Us (2000), The South-East of Serbia – the Continuation of the Crisis and the Probable Outcome (together with a group of authors, 2001), Arabic Grammar (with A.Mitrović, 2005), Islam: Dogma and Life (2008), The Autonomy of Reason (with M. Jevtić, 2009), Neo-Ottomanism (2010), The Pigeon that hasn’t become the Bird (2012), The Signs of Time (2014), From One Day to Another (2015), From Neo-Ottomanism to Erdoganism (2016). Many of Tanasković’s works have been translated and published in various languages. Darko Tanasković was a visiting professor at the University of Sarajevo, Skopje, Algiers, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, at the University of Sofia, and at the University “La Sapienza” in Rome. In 1995 was nominated a member of the Academy of European Sciences and Arts (Academia Scientiarum Et Artium Europea) in Salzburg. Since 2000 he has been a corresponding member of the Society of Turkish Language (Türk Dil Kurumu) in Ankara. Darko Tanasković was teaching at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology (Belgrade), the Academy for Diplomacy and Security (Belgrade), and the Faculty of Political Sciences (Banja Luka). He was the president of the Council of the Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and the member of the Foreign Policy Council of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is a member of the Association of Translators of Serbia, Association of Writers of Serbia, and of the Serbian PEN. From 1995 to 1999 he was accredited Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Turkey and (1998-1999) Azerbaijan. In 2001 Darko Tanasković was appointed to the Yugoslav Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. From 2002 to 2008 he was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia/Serbia to the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. From 2015 to 2018 he served as Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of the Republic of Serbia to UNESCO.

Member of the Commission

Laurence French

B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in sociology (social disorganization/social psychology) from the University of New Hampshire, a Ph.D. in cultural psychology (educational psychology and measurement) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an M.A. in school psychology from Western New Mexico University. Pursued postdoctoral studies in “minorities and criminal justice education” at the State University of New York-Albany and completed the post-doctoral prescribing psychology program including the national exam. Professor emeritus of psychology from Western New Mexico University; life-member and Fellow of the American Psychological Association; Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues; Diplomate/Fellow of the College of Prescribing Psychologists (charter member); life-member of the American Society of Criminology. Served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW Post 2860); the Third Marine Division Association; and Disabled American Veterans (DAV). He is a licensed clinical psychologist (Arizona); a Fulbright Scholar (University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina – 2009-2010); and was a Visiting Endowed Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada (fall semester 2010). Completed a Fulbright Specialist project (#6764) on “war crimes and missing persons,” for Republika Srpska, Minister of Interior, Bosnia-Herzegovina at the Police College, University of Banja Luka, February 22 – April 3, 2016. He won a 2014 McGraw Hill Distinguished Scholar Award and the 2014 Distinguished Career Contribution to Research Award from Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race) of the American Psychological Association. In 2018, he won a Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award. He has over 300 publications including 20 books—his latest books are Routledge Handbook on Native American Justice Issues (Routledge, 2019) Editor/author; The History of Policing America: From Militias and Military to the Law Enforcement of Today (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); North American Border Conflicts: Race, Politics, and Ethics (CRC Press, 2016); Policing American Indians: A Unique Chapter in American Jurisprudence (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015); Frog Town: Portrait of a French Canadian Parish in New England (University Press of America, 2014); and War Trauma and its Aftermath: An International Perspective on the Balkan and Gulf Wars (University Press of America, 2012). His major areas of research interest are international and comparative social, human and criminal justice; Native American and minority issues; police and criminal psychology and neuro-, clinical, and forensic psychology.

Member of the Commission

Giuseppe Zaccaria

Giuseppe Zaccaria was born on the 18th of November 1950 in Bari, Italy. He was a professional journalist since 1975. He worked in “Il Giornale” (1976-78), “ll Messaggero” (1979-80), and “La Stampa” (1981-2009). From 2010 – 2012 worked as Chief of communication in Fiat Srbija. From 2012 – 2017 was a publisher and editor of “Italintermedia” news agency in Belgrade. As a foreign correspondent for “La Stampa” he covered for more than twenty years main events in Europe and the Middle East starting from the end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania; the post-communist process in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia; politics in Greece; major events in Israel, Lebanon, Siria, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia; Nelson Mandela’s election in South Africa; end of Suharto’s regime in Indonesia; East Timor crisis. As a war correspondent, he covered all the Balkans’ conflicts; the first and the second Gulf War; the Afghanistan crisis; the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006. He took many interviews from presidents and leaders like Slobodan Milosević (in 2000, the only interview with a foreign journalist in more than a decade), Muammar Gaddafi, Mandela, and all the main politicians in Balkans. He covered also the Yugoslav crisis in Croatia, Serbia Bosnia, and Kosovo; the NATO campaign in 1999. He is the author of the book “Noi, criminali di Guerra”, published by Baldini & Castoldi in 1996 about war crimes in Bosnia. Acted as a witness in Hague tribunal. He published the biography of Mira Markovic under the title “Memories of Red Witch” in Italian, German, Spanish, Serbian, and Slovenian language. He is a winner of the “Hemingway Prize” and the “Saint Vincent” special prize for journalism in Italy. In 1999 he published an article dedicated to Serbian people being published in “Aspenia”, the monthly review of Aspen Institute. From 2019 to 2020 he served as a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Suffering of Serbs between 1991 to 1995. He died in April 2020 at age 69.

Member of the Commission

Patrick Barriot

Patrick Barriot, MD, is a specialist in anesthesiology, intensive care, and disaster medicine. He has participated in and completed the international training course of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) Team. He had a career in the French army where he was successively assigned to the emergency medical service of the Paris Fire Brigade, to the 11th Paratrooper Division, to the Civil Security Intervention Unit N°1, to the Forward Surgical Unit N°7 (war in former Yugoslavia). He was then a chief medical officer of Civil Security Intervention Units and medical advisor to the prefect in charge of Civil Security. He left the army with the rank of colonel. He was afterward a hospital practitioner of civilian hospitals with the specialty of surgical intensive care. He participated in numerous relief and humanitarian aid operations during armed conflicts (wars in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Congo-Brazzaville…) and natural disasters (earthquakes, epidemics…). In July 1990, during the popular uprising in Tirana (Albania), he was the only doctor in the foreign embassies (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey…) to provide medical care for the thousands of Albanians who had taken refuge in the precincts of these embassies. He is the author of many medical and scientific publications in the major international peer-reviewed journals and many emergency medicine books. He is currently Medical Director of the European Institute of Health Training (Institut Européen de Formation en santé), Director of medical operations of the RAPID consortium charged with ensuring the safety of expatriates in very high-risk areas (Mogadishu, Somalia), a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine (Montpellier, France) and at the Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences (Casablanca, Morocco).

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