Professor Dermot Groome helps design European Broadcast Union's Ukraine Archive

CARLISLE, Pa.—Since January 2023, Professor Dermot Groome has helped the European Broadcast Union (EBU) in its development of a database and repository containing over 30,000 authenticated videos related to atrocity crimes in Ukraine. The EBU is an alliance of public service media (e.g., BBC, RTE, etc.) with over 150 members. This database will allow investigators, journalists, and scholars to search for videos and audio recordings related to the war in Ukraine. The database also contains the information needed to establish a video’s authenticity and allow its admission as evidence in court.

The EBU launched the Ukraine Archive on November 18, 2025. You can find more information about it by clicking here.

Groome hopes that eventually there will be similar databases and repositories of video evidence for all conflicts, facilitating accountability for the perpetrators of international crimes and justice for their victims.

Professor Dermot Groome is a Professor of Law and the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Much of his teaching, scholarship, and service focus on emerging areas of human rights and international criminal law and draw upon his deep expertise and experiences. After starting his career in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he was a member of the Sex Crimes Unit, and after working in Jamaica, W.I. on issues of community development, human rights, and children’s rights, Professor Groome worked in Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he served as a Legal Advisor to the International Human Rights Law Group, helped lead an investigation into a 1997 attack on peaceful protestors and drafted a report for the UN Security Council, helped the Cambodia Defender’s Project and Legal Aid of Cambodia investigate deaths in police custody, worked on issues related to the incarceration of children, and wrote a draft juvenile criminal procedure code. Professor Groome subsequently spent over 11 years as a senior war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He investigated and drafted the first genocide indictment against a sitting head of state, Slobodan Milošević, and was the Senior Trial Attorney for the Bosnia indictment. In total, Groome led the prosecution of five international criminal trials including the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. He led eight large complex international investigations of senior military, political, and police officials. Groome’s cases all included crimes of sexual violence against women, men, and children. He was instrumental in the development of Joint Criminal Enterprise, a theory of criminal responsibility often used to assess the culpability of senior officials for the crimes committed by their subordinates. Two documentaries have been made about Professor Groome’s cases: The Trial of Ratko Mladić (PBS/Frontline 2019) and Crimes Before the ICTY: Višegrad (UN TV 2017).