Brenda J. Hollis

Ms. Hollis is currently serving as Principal Trial Lawyer (D-1 level), Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, in which capacity she leads the investigation into possible international crimes committed in Ukraine, reporting directly to the ICC Prosecutor. She also served as Principal Trial Lawyer (D-1 level) leading the investigation into possible crimes committed in Palestine and Israel until the filing of warrants of arrest in May 2024. Prior to assuming her duties with the ICC OTP, Ms. Hollis served as the International Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia from July 2019 until July 2022, having been the Reserve International Co-Prosecutor from April 2015. Prior to her appointment as the ECCC’s International Co-Prosecutor, she was the Prosecutor of both the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2010–2019). After serving as a legal consultant to the SCSL Prosecutor in 2002, 2003 and 2006, in February 2007 she became lead prosecutor in the case against former Liberian President, Charles Taylor and continued to lead the prosecution of that case until the appeal was concluded in 2013. From 1994 to 2001, Ms. Hollis held various positions in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, including that of Co-Counsel in the Duško Tadić case, the first litigated case in an international criminal tribunal since the Nuremberg trials, lead prosecutor in both the reopening of the Furundžija case, in which rape was charged as torture, and the preparatory stage of the case against former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Ms. Hollis has trained judges, prosecutors and investigators in Cambodia, Indonesia and Iraq. She also assisted victims of international crimes in Colombia and in the Democratic Republic of Congo to prepare submissions requesting investigations by the International Criminal Court. Before entering the international arena, Ms. Hollis was a US Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, and served as an officer in the US Air Force, initially as an Air Intelligence Briefing Officer and then as a Judge Advocate, the latter primarily as a prosecutor at the trial and appellate level, retiring with the rank of Colonel.