This blog of the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH) aims at granting the public opinion access to all information related to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon : daily press review in english, french and arabic ; UN documents, etc...

Ce blog du
Centre Libanais des droits humains (CLDH) a pour objectif de rendre accessible à l'opinion publique toute l'information relative au Tribunal Spécial pour le Liban : revue de presse quotidienne en anglais, francais et arabe ; documents onusiens ; rapports, etc...
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PRESS REVIEW

The Security Council Resolution on Syria Is a Pretext for the Bombing and Occupation of Syria ; The Resolution Is in Violation of the UN Charter

Center for Research on Globalization - The Security Council Resolution on Syria Is a Pretext for the Bombing and Occupation of Syria ; The Resolution Is in Violation of the UN Charter, November 2, 2005

By Niloufer Bhagwat
Rafik Harari died in a manner which anyone who has humanity would not want any individual to die, and it is conceded he was a former Prime Minister. Does that justify an investigation by the Secretary General of the United Nations and a Resolution by the Security Council, when the pogroms committed by the Phalangists and Israel army in conspiracy with General Aaron Sharon have never been investigated, even though it took place during an international conflict and the occupation of Lebanon. Are the lives of the Palestinian refugees who were brualy killed, raped, mutilated any less important than that of Rafik Hariri and which provision of the UN Charter says so? The world has witnessed the killings by bomb blasts of Indian citizens from 1993 including in Kashmir, Delhi, Mumbai in scores of places with a death toll of thousands of citizens killed and maimed by covert agencies in India. The bombings mysteriously coincided invariably with some sharpening crisis of some nature or the other or of impending pogroms against minorities or other sections. Yet UN probe was never ordered and there is no resolution of the Security Council on bomb blasts in India, the Philippines or Indonesia. Recently no less a person than a former Minister of Indonesia has claimed that the Indonesian military had covert links with those perpetrating the blasts at Bali. Earlier, junior military officers in the Philippines had made similar allegations against some of the highest in the political leadership of their country. The United Nations Charter explicitly and implicitly prohibits interference in the internal affairs and criminal investigations in any country, the only exception possible would be War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity as defined by the Nuremberg principles perpetrated by any government, including the permanent members of the Security Council. Apart from this exception the sovereignty of every nation, society or people is guaranteed by the UN Charter and no country in the conduct of its criminal investigation can be influenced or pressurized by the permanent or elected members of the Security Council without this constituting an undue interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. To illustrate the diabolical nature of the double standards the series of covert political assassinations carried out by some of the permanent and other governments in the Security Council have been open knowledge the world over. The assassination of President Allende in Chile is one example, where the UN and all the members of the Security Council continued to deal with the murderous Pinochet regime. The same General Pinochet is now indicted for receiving funds and other largesse from American Banks and other financial institutions claiming age in defence. The role of Henry Kissinger in that assassination was carefully documented by impeccable American sources, and yet neither has Henry Kissinger been indicted nor anyone associated with the conspiracy to murder the innocent and install in Chile a government favorable to US - UK Corporations and finance capital. In India two Prime Ministers were brually assassinated. Indira Gandhi in 1984 while in office and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, while leader of the opposition was killed by a suicide bomber mid way through an election , an act of covert agencies and terrorist organizations acting in a covert conspiracy . The Inquiry Commission inquiring into the assassination has held that it is necessary to further investigate the conspiracy and conspirators behind the suicide bomber as these have not been unmasked. Prior to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a leading member of a terrorist organization sheltered in the UK announced on BBC that Mrs.Indira Gandhi should be killed. Neither the Secretary General of the United Nations nor the Security Council directed an investigation into the International conspiracy to assassinate Mrs Indira Gandhi despite prima facie evidence on record that the funds and training were being received by these covert organizations from the UK and across the Atlantic. Similarly it cannot be forgotten that an urgent message was sent to the late Rajiv Gandhi by the late Yasser Arafat that there was a covert plot to assassinate him, which came to pass. The fact that Yasser Arafat communicated the existence of this covert conspiracy would reveal that Mossad could not be very far from this plot, as a former Mossad agent has admitted in a controversial book that more than one side to the fratricide in Sri Lanka were trained by Mossad in Israel including sections of the LTTE .We have the example of the Kanishka aircraft which was bombed with hundreds of Indian and other passengers on board killed with the failure of Canadian Intelligence to conduct a public inquiry or to indict covert organizations being funded and operated from Canada, with a highly compromised trial satisfying none of the surviving relatives as comprehensive and thorough; yet the Security Council of the United Nations despite the hundreds of lives lost did not indict the government of Canada and put it on notice that those responsible must be proceeded against in the alternative Canada could be subjected to sanctions . Can one Rafiq Harari whose assassination however brutal be given greater primacy over the murder of hundreds and thousands of citizens in covert International and national incidents which the UN Security Council has never cared to investigate even though when they have taken place across international boundaries as in the Kanishka crash, during wars of occupation as in the case of Sabra and Chatilla , in Kashmir and those killed in coups and counter coups by external forces in Latin America and other places . No inquiry has taken place as to how Ahmed Shah Massood of the Nothern Alliance was murdered in Afghanistan two days before 9/11. An innocent Brazilian was recently murdered by the police in England and there has been no Resolution on the UK by the Security Council and no international investigation by a prosecutor into the suspicious London bomb blasts and no possibility of sanctions against the UK, India, Indonesia, Philippines or other countries where scoresof innocent citizens are being killed by bomb blasts. The 9/11 tragedy remains a mystery with no UN investigation and no Security Council Resolution though thousands died in one incident alone and we are now informed of "Able Danger " and the implications of the controlled demolitions of the towers by explosives and not by aircraft. For the last few years since 1993 in tandem with the neoliberal globalization program imposing a creeping economic death sentence on several classes of Indian society including weavers, peasants, workers, petty traders, bomb blasts have been occurring in different cities of the Indian Union on ordinarly citizens with covert agencies operating, leaving thousands killed and maimed including Kashmiris in the State of Jammu and Kashmir including sections of the middle classes and working people in Mumbai , New Delhi , Tamil Nad, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, among other cities . Despite the fact that this discloses a complete and abject failure of more than one national party in power at the Centre and in the States where the bomb blasts have taken place the Security Council has not appointed an international inquiry to protect the lives of the Indian people against these covert attacks from allegedly terrorist organizations operating from inside India or from outside India and not a single government has resigned acknowledging responsibility in not being able to secure the right to life of the citizen of India a basic function of government. The propoganda systems national and International have broked down, no one believes the Goebelsian news reports, the Security Council and IAEA are seen to be aiding and abetting invasions and occupations. Even war can no longer camouflage the civlizational collapse when it is necessary to kill innocent men, women and children for systems to survive. On the murder of Rafiq Hariri the central question asked in any crime is a simple one:" Who benefits?" The answer is that the murder of Rafiq Hariri benefits those corporations controlling governments who desire to militarily invade yet another country of the region vital for control of hydrocarbon resources and pipelines and for that purpose secured withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon a country which was radically severed from Syria by the elite classes of the big powers, in what has been the " Great Game " of redrawing artificially the maps of countries and societies in the age of Imperialism and now in its new camouflage neoliberal globalization in the tradition of Cecil Rhodes who recommended colonization as a policy to prevent revolution at home in societies increasingly polarized. For governments like Syria who attempted for decades to comply with various and diverse requests of the Imperial powers, there is a lesson, which is no one is spared not even yesterday's ally. Despite tight rope walking every single leader, the government and its members are dispensable in a brutal game which recognizes no one and makes not a single concession to humanity. Many leaders erstwhile friends and allies of the US-UK corporations will follow Saddam Hussain either to trial or to the grave including those who collaborated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iran, Pakistan, India and anywhere else... All the perfumes of Arabia cannot cleanse this blood of innocent humanity.

Background - خلفية

On 13 December 2005 the Government of the Lebanese Republic requested the UN to establish a tribunal of an international character to try all those who are alleged responsible for the attack of 14 february 2005 that killed the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. The United Nations and the Lebanese Republic consequently negotiated an agreement on the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Liens - Links - مواقع ذات صلة

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Schenker , March 30, 2010 . Beirut Spring: The Hariri Tribunal Goes Hunting for Hizballah


Frederic Megret, McGill University, 2008. A special tribunal for Lebanon: the UN Security Council and the emancipation of International Criminal Justice


International Center for Transitional Justice Handbook on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, April 10, 2008


United Nations
Conférence de presse de Nicolas Michel, 19 Sept 2007
Conférence de presse de Nicolas Michel, 27 Mars 2008


Département d'Etat américain
* 2009 Human Rights report
* 2008 Human Rights report
* 2007 Human Rights report
* 2006 Human Rights report
* 2005 Human Rights report



ICG - International Crisis Group
The Hariri Tribunal: Separate the Political and the Judicial, 19 July, 2007. [Fr]


HCSS - Hague Centre for strategic studies
Hariri, Homicide and the Hague


Human Rights Watch
* Hariri Tribunal can restore faith in law, 11 may 2006
* Letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, april 27, 2006


Amnesty International
* STL insufficient without wider action to combat impunity
* Liban : le Tribunal de tous les dangers, mai 2007
* Jeu de mecano


Courrier de l'ACAT - Wadih Al Asmar
Le Tribunal spécial pour le Liban : entre espoir et inquiétude


Georges Corm
La justice penale internationale pour le Liban : bienfait ou malediction?


Nadim Shedadi and Elizabeth Wilmshurt, Chatham House
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon : the UN on Trial?, July 2007


Issam Michael Saliba, Law Library of Congress
International Tribunals, National Crimes and the Hariri Assassination : a novel development in International Criminal Law, June 2007


Mona Yacoubian, Council on Foreign Relations
Linkages between Special UN Tribunal, Lebanon, and Syria, June 1, 2007