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

June 23, 2009 - Daily Star - HRW urges Syria to free or charge Hariri case detainee

BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Monday for the release of a man held by Syria without charge since 2005 in connection with the murder of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. "The Syrian authorities have been holding Ziad Ramadan for almost four years," the New York-based watchdog's Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said.
"If they have nothing to hide in the Hariri investigation, then they should immediately free him or charge him with a recognizable crime," she said in a statement.
The UN-backed investigation into the Hariri murder questioned Ramadan, a Syrian citizen working in Lebanon, when television channels broadcast footage of a man named Ahmed Abu Adas claiming responsibility for the Valentine's Day bombing that killed the former premier.
"Ziad Ramadan was a friend of Abu Adas and his colleague in a computer company in Beirut - that's basically the link," the senior researcher at HRW's Beirut office, Nadim Houry, said.
The UN-backed tribunal has said officially that it never requested that he be detained, Houry added.
"What they were asking about was Ahmed Abu Adas: did he drive and did he have internet access," he told AFP.
After being questioned in Lebanon, Ramadan left for Syria where he turned himself in upon hearing they were looking for him, HRW said.
He was then detained for almost a year in a Syrian military security bureau, dubbed the Palestine branch, before being transferred back to the main prison in the city of Homs, north of Damascus.
In August 2007, Syrian authorities again transferred Ramadan to the Palestine branch without informing his family, who were able to see him just once, in September 2007.
His family has heard nothing of him since, Houry said.
"Our concern is twofold: the first is that he has been incommunicado and has for all intents and purposes disappeared since 2007," he told AFP.
"The second is if they have evidence that he committed a crime, then they should turn him in to court for a fair trial."

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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