Japan plans to nominate Kuniji Shibahara, a professor of law at Gakushuin University, to serve as a judge at a United Nations-assisted tribunal to be set up in Cambodia to bring leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice, government sources said Friday.
The sources said that Shibahara, who concurrently serves as a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, will almost certainly be chosen by the U.N. as one of the tribunal's nine non-Cambodian judges, given the fact that Japan has played a key role in peace and development of the war-torn Southeast Asian country.
Shibahara has already agreed informally to run for the post, the sources said. If selected as a judge at the Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, the professor will become the fourth Japanese to serve as a judge at an international court.