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

October 6, 2009 - Daily Star - UAE jails Syrian spy in Hariri probe

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

ABU DHABI: A Syrian former spy who was a prosecution witness in the inquiry into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was on Monday given six months in jail and deportation for entering the UAE on a forged Czech passport.
The Supreme State Security Court in Abu Dhabi pronounced its verdict, which cannot be appealed, ordering that the counterfeit passport of Mohammad Zuhair Siddiq, a former member of Syria’s intelligence services, be confiscated.
“The penalty ends in mid-October,” defense lawyer Fahd al-Sabhan told reporters after the verdict, referring to the time his client has already spent in custody.
“We have previously annulled the request that he be handed in to the Syrian authorities. But he could be deported or not deported depending on the sovereign executive decision.”
It was not clear to which country Siddiq could be deported. During the hearing, he asked the court how he could be deported when he has a court order that bans his being handed over to Damascus.
Syria had requested the return of its citizen, who was apprehended in April in the emirate of Sharjah and later transferred to Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital where the federal state security court is located.
Wearing a navy blue and white suit, Siddiq looked different from pictures of him that have appeared in the Lebanese press. He was partly bald with grey hair and had a beard.
He also seemed nervous but said in court after the verdict that he respected the decision.
He said he had been given the forged passport by French intelligence and that he would sue the “people who are responsible.”
During the proceedings the judge referred just once to Siddiq’s alleged role in the Hariri case. “We have charged you with entering on a forged passport and this has nothing to do with your being a ‘King Witness’ or any other,” he said.
In initial reports of the United Nations inquiry commission into the February 2005 killing of Hariri in a huge seafront bomb blast in Beirut, Siddiq was described as a key witness.
He claimed that Lebanon’s former pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud and Syrian President Bashar Assad gave the order to kill the wealthy businessman who opposed the grip exercised by Damascus over its tiny neighbor.
However, Siddiq later recanted, and Lebanese and Syrian judicial authorities accused him of lying. The UAE judge confirmed that the verdict was issued after state security denied any knowledge of Siddiq’s entry into the country or being complicit in it, which his lawyer had previously claimed.
In May, the prosecutor at the international tribunal charged with bringing Hariri’s killers to justice said Siddiq was no longer a credible witness and was of no interest to the inquiry.
Siddiq was arrested in France in 2005 under an international warrant as part of the investigation into the Hariri killing.
The French judicial authorities refused to hand him over to Lebanon because of the “absence of a guarantee that he would not be subject to the death penalty.”

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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