Tomas K. Manguel

Mr.  Manguel is an Argentine lawyer, specialized in criminal law, international criminal law, and human rights. He is currently working as a legal adviser and of councel for several law firms and organizations in international criminal law, human rights, and international cooperation, providing critical support to litigation teams, including in the Rohingyas' case under universal jurisdiction before the Argentine courts. He has also led the International Criminal Law Department at Strali, an Italian strategic litigation NGO focused on promoting and protecting human rights. Amongst others, Strali’s initiatives have addressed crimes committed against migrants in Libya -including the potential criminal responsibility of Italian and Maltese authorities- and have supported efforts to open a universal jurisdiction case concerning crimes against humanity committed against the Uyghur population.

 

Before that, Mr. Manguel dedicated over 20 years as a Senior Legal Officer in the Argentine Criminal Federal Judicial System, specializing in organized crimes and crimes against humanity. He worked extensively on cases during the investigation phase at a First Instance Court and later at the Federal Criminal Court of Cassation (last resort in criminal matters). During this period, he worked in high-profile cases, including the 1994 Iran-backed Hizballah bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires and in the largest trial in Argentina for human rights violations committed during the dictatorship of 1976-1983, the ESMA case (Navy Mechanics School),  the main and most emblematic clandestine detention center during the dictatorship. In that case, life sentence convictions against Astiz,  Acosta and  Cavallo, where finally confirmed. Mr. Manguel is also a Universal Jurisdiction Roster Expert for the organisation Justice Rapid Response.  He has also worked at the UN International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) within the Trial Chamber on the Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić case.

 

Besides his professional experience, Mr.  Manguel is also a professor of International Criminal Law on the LLM. Program of Criminal Law of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, in Argentina. He is also a visiting lecturer at several universities and institutions worldwide, including the International Institute for Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, University of Istanbul, Türkiye, Faculty of Law;  Bursa Uludağ University, Türkiye;  Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, Università di Bologna, Italy; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland and Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Rosario, Colombia.

 

Mr. Manguel is also a PhD candidate at Palermo University, where he was awarded a full scholarship by the European Union. The focus of his investigation is the renaissance of universal jurisdiction and its impact on the interaction with the ICC’s principle of complementarity, where his preliminary conclusions have been presented in several seminars and symposiums. He also holds postgraduate degrees in criminal law (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and two LLM.s, in criminal law (University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra, Spain) and international crime and justice (United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Italy).

 

Mr. Manguel has served as a peer reviewer for several prestigious law journals, including the Journal of International Criminal Justice, where he reviewed articles on topics such as universal jurisdiction and transitional justice. He is also a prolific author, having contributed numerous articles and book chapters in the field of International Criminal Law. Several of his works have been included in the International Criminal Court’s Spanish Language Model Course on International Criminal Law and the ICC. His latest contribution, an upcoming chapter in a book on universal jurisdiction, is titled 'The Venezuela Case as a Paradigm of the Lack of Harmonious Interpretation of the Interaction Between the Principle of Complementarity and Universal Jurisdiction in the Argentine Judicial System', which will soon be published by Editorial Ad-Hoc.