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...
.

PRESS REVIEW

Russia reiterates support for international tribunalPukin insists court 'shouldn't be politicized"

Daily Star - Russia reiterates support for international tribunalPukin insists court 'shouldn't be politicized", 12 April 2008

Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Sergei Boukine reiterated on Friday Moscow's support for the international tribunal that would try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and related crimes. Pukin told reporters the ongoing investigation into the 2005 assassination of Hariri "should be accomplished and the culprits, be they individuals or sides, should be punished."
"We adhere to this stand and we would support the tribunal that shouldn't be politicized. We, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, follow up closely the ongoing investigation into the crime," he added.
The ambassador also stressed that his country rejected "political assassinations."
Pukin made the remarks to reporters during a visit to Progressive Socialist party leader Walid jumblatt at the latter's ancestral palace in the Chouf town of Mukhtara.
Last week, Russia pledged to contribute $ 500, 000 to the international tribunal.
In other developments, German Prosecutor and former head of the International probe committee into the Hariri assassination Detlev Mehlis described as "nonsense" allegations made by detained former head of the General Security Jamil al-Sayyed in a letter sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Mehlis' remarks were published by the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat on Friday.
In his letter to Ban, Sayyed said that Mehlis had asked him to tell the Syrian government to find a Syrian to confess to the killing of Hariri.
Sayyed said that three months prior to his arrest an investigator from the UN commission had asked him to transmit a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad "which was meant to persuade him to present to the commission a Syrian victim of a certain caliber, who would confess to the crime and would eventually be found dead." This would allow for an agreement with Syria similar to the one reached with Libya in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, he said.
A Libyan intelligence agent and a Libyan airline official were tried for the bombing and the intelligence agent was convicted, though a Scottish judicial commission said last June that new evidence indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
Sayyed said he told the UN investigator that he could not transmit such a message unless he was provided evidence "pointing in the direction of a Syrian involvement in the crime, otherwise the Syrians would think that he was leading them into a trap."
The general said the investigator replied that the UN commission did not have such evidence and insisted that if Sayyed did not transmit the message for a Syrian to admit to the crime he himself would be blamed for the assassination.
On Thursday, key Syrian witness in the probe into former Hariri's assassination said he was in hiding in Europe as his family demanded answers from France about his fate.
Mohammed Zuheir al-Siddiq's whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery since he disappeared about a month ago from his suburban Paris home, and relatives in Syria say that they have been without news for two months.
"I am living in a secret hideout, close to France and the international tribunal, and I am well," told Kuwait's As-Siyassah newspaper quoted Siddiq as saying by telephone.

No comments:

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