When Timor-Leste took its seat as Asean’s 11th member, the moment resonated deeply for those who had seen the nation’s birth in blood.
Among them was Shyamala, then a young United Nations (UN) prosecutor who arrived just as the killing stopped and stayed long enough to see justice begin.
In 1999, when the people of Timor-Leste voted for independence, their triumph was short-lived.
Pro-Indonesian militias, aided by elements of the Indonesian military, unleashed a wave of violence that left villages burned, families displaced and thousands dead.
In the ruins of that shattered new state, a second struggle began — the fight for justice.
Roots of conscience
Shyamala comes from a family where public duty was not a career but a calling.
Her mother, N Saraswathy Devi, was among Malaysia’s pioneering women lawyers, a founding member of the Asean Bar Association and president of the International Federation of Women Lawyers in 2005.
She practised law until shortly before her death in 2023, appearing in every level of Malaysia’s courts and campaigning for greater gender representation among judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Her father, P Alagendra, now 96, was a hockey Olympian and one of Malaysia’s most decorated police officers — a man who survived four assassination attempts and helped shape the nation’s early sporting identity.
All four daughters became lawyers — Raja Rajeswari, Venkateswari, Anna Poorani and Shyamala — each carrying forward the family’s fierce sense of justice.
Shyamala is married to Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the ICC.
For the Alagendras, the law has always been a form of service — a way to stand for integrity when power falters.
Prosecuting amid ruins
From 2001 to 2005, Shyamala served as a prosecutor with the Serious Crimes Unit under the UN Transitional Administration in Timor-Leste.
The task was immense: to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity committed during the 1999 violence.
Justice had to be built from the ground up, often in courtrooms without electricity and in communities still haunted by grief.
During her tenure, she investigated and prosecuted three of the 10 priority cases identified by the UN for their historical and moral weight.
Among them was the Lolotoe case — Timor-Leste’s first to charge rape as a crime against humanity — a landmark that redefined how gender-based violence was treated in the country.
She also played a pivotal role in cases indicting senior Indonesian military and police commanders, as well as Timorese militia leaders.
It included atrocities such as the Suai Church massacre, where dozens of civilians seeking sanctuary were slaughtered.
Her work helped establish a cornerstone of modern international justice: that no rank, no uniform and no political shield can place anyone above the law.
Justice in partnership
Shyamala’s years in Dili were as collaborative as they were combative.
Working under Timorese general prosecutor Longuinhos Monteiro, she led investigations alongside local prosecutors and police officers, mentoring them in evidence gathering and courtroom advocacy.
“True justice is never imported — it must grow from within,” she says. “Partnership, not paternalism, gives it life.”
It was in those fragile courtrooms that she learned an enduring truth: justice cannot be parachuted in by foreigners; it must be owned by those who lived its cost.
That belief would guide every chapter of her later work.
The de Mello years
In Timor-Leste, Shyamala was sworn in by Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the visionary UN administrator who guided the nation through its post-war transition.
De Mello embodied the UN’s highest ideal — that human rights and sovereignty must walk hand in hand.
In 2003, while serving in Baghdad as the UN’s top human rights official, he was killed when a truck bomb ripped through the UN compound.
“His administration taught us that justice is the first act of peace,” Shyamala recalls. “His death reminded us that moral courage often carries the highest price.”
Returning to Dili
Nearly a decade later, Timor-Leste called her back.
At the invitation of prosecutor José da Costa Ximenes, Shyamala returned to train local judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers on developments in international criminal law.
By then, the country she had once helped stabilise was one of the few in the region to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC — a powerful signal of its faith in law over vengeance.
Ximenes, reflecting on Timor-Leste’s long path to Asean membership, said:
“In the justice sector, we counted on Shyamala’s contribution as a Malaysian who helped build the system at the beginning of our independence.
“We also counted on her when she was defence counsel at the ICC, training our judges, prosecutors and lawyers.
“As Timor-Leste becomes a member of Asean, I express my gratitude to Shyamala as one of our big friends.”
A global legal journey
Timor-Leste was her crucible, but the world became her courtroom.
Shyamala went on to serve as prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and later at the ICC, where she handled some of the most consequential cases of modern times, from Darfur to Libya, the Balkans to Kenya.
Her cases have spanned genocide, crimes against humanity, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers.
Among the figures she has represented as defence counsel are Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Kenyan president William Ruto, Fatmir Limaj, former deputy prime minister of Kosovo, and Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, former Libyan prime minister.
In Sierra Leone, she was part of the team that saw Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, a watershed moment in international law.
In Fiji, as assistant director of prosecution, she secured the country’s first life sentences for child rape. And as a senior adviser to UN mandates on sexual and gender-based crimes, she has contributed to justice processes for Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
At The Hague and beyond
Today, Shyamala lives in The Hague, at the heart of the world’s international justice community.
She serves as counsel at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, where she and her Kuala Lumpur-based sister, Venkateswari, as lead counsel, represent Jakup Krasniqi, the former Kosovo Liberation Army spokesperson.
She is also senior consultant with the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, focusing on sexual and gender-based crimes and crimes against children.
Alongside this, she continues to do pro bono work for victims, often quietly and without recognition.
“The law must serve people, not power,” she says. “Justice, at its best, restores dignity before it restores order.”
A witness and a builder
Her peers describe her not merely as a prosecutor but as a bridge — between systems, survivors and statutes; between the ideal of justice and its imperfect practice.
Professor David Cohen of Stanford University, who monitored the Timor-Leste trials she prosecuted, said:
“I have known none as committed to the cause of justice and the welfare of the Timorese people as Shyamala.
“From her groundbreaking investigations of sexual violence in the 1999 conflict to her continuing work in judicial capacity-building, she has made a lasting contribution.”
Her own reflections are more restrained but no less powerful:
“Law alone cannot heal a nation — only compassion can,” she says. “In Timor-Leste, I saw forgiveness redefine justice.”
The victory of reconciliation
As Timor-Leste now joins Asean, Shyamala’s journey comes full circle — not as a chapter closed, but as proof that reconciliation can outlast ruin.
“I have seen firsthand the extraordinary resilience of the Timorese people — their will to rebuild, to forgive and to reconcile after unthinkable suffering,” she says.
“Timor-Leste’s entry into Asean is more than diplomacy; it is the victory of reconciliation over ruin, and a beacon to our region that true peace is born not of power, but of courage and the indomitable strength of the human spirit.”
For Malaysia, her story is both a reminder and an inspiration — that justice, when guided by conscience, can travel far beyond borders.
For Timor-Leste, it is a tribute not etched in monuments, but in memory — the enduring gratitude for a Malaysian who stood by them when their world was broken, and helped them find their voice in the language of law.