Daily Star - Tribunal Hariri devrait commencer debut 2009, 2 Aout 2009
The International Tribunal that will try the suspected assassins of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is set to begin its work by the beginning of next year, a source at the United Nations told As-Safir on Thursday. The source, who the daily said is close to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said the UN chief "has pledged clearly that progress will continue toward establishing the tribunal," regardless of the latest political developments in Lebanon with respect to the election of a new president and the formation of a new government. The same source indicated that the Security Council had agreed last month to extend the mandate of chief UN investigator Daniel Bellemare until the end of this year, but the source raised doubts that the Council would agree to extend Bellemare's mandate again. "This means that at the end of the year, the investigator will assume his new position as prosecutor for the international court," the UN source added, while indicating that Bellemare has made progress in the probe into Hariri's February 2005 assassination. "I believe that he now has something that will enable him to proceed to assume the position of prosecutor." According to the source, Bellemare is not planning to disclose the names of the accused, but rather he will deliver them to the investigating judge, who will in his turn decide whether to accept or reject the requests for detention. The UN source said that Ban preferred not to announce the names of the Lebanese and international judges until the end of the year, "in order to reduce expenses and also to protect their lives." He added that as soon as the judges' names are announced, they will be transported to The Hague and placed under guard. The Hariri tribunal will be based at a former Dutch intelligence headquarters in a suburb of The Hague. In an interview with The Daily Star on Thursday, UN Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Nicholas Michel said Ban will not make any decision until the fall on when the head of the investigation of the killing of Hariri will take up the post of prosecutor at the long-awaited tribunal. Ban will decide between "the end of September and mid-November" when Canadian Bellemare will become the first prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in Holland's The Hague, Michel said. Michel also said that the tribunal's judges had yet to meet to set the rules of the tribunal and determine which judges will lead the tribunal's trial and appeal chambers.
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