2008, December 20 - Daily Star - Australian policeman to probe Hariri assassination.

Egyptian-born Australian policeman Nick Kaldas has been appointed chief of investigations for the United Nations tribunal trying suspects of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Australian police said on Friday. Kaldas, the deputy commissioner of the New South Wales (NSW) police, will lead the investigations from the beginning of March next year, police commissioner Andrew Scipione said. The tribunal was created to try those accused of involvement in a wave of political assassinations in Lebanon, including that of Hariri, who was killed with 22 others in a massive car bombing in February 2005. Kaldas, who is fluent in Arabic, has worked primarily in major crimes and counter-terrorism for 27 years with the NSW police force and said he was honored to be chosen for the role. "Working for the UN is the closest a police officer could come to representing their country, so it is a role I take on with a great sense of responsibility," he said. The 51-year-old deputy commissioner was previously the head of investigations into Australia's first political assassination - the shooting of NSW parliamentarian John Newman in 1994. Kaldas has also worked as a senior police adviser to the Iraqi government and assisted the Iraqi Special Tribunal which prosecuted Saddam Hussein. Eleven judges, four of whom are Lebanese, have been nominated to the court. Their identities have not yet been released because of security concerns. Also on Friday, the Australian Associated Press revealed that the trial of Hariri's suspected killers would be hosted in an abandoned gymnasium in a remote suburb of The Hague. The tribunal will be housed in the former headquarters of the Dutch intelligence service, an enormous building with fortress-like security. The courtroom will be built in what used to be a gymnasium for spies. "Of all the international tribunals in The Hague, the security concerns around this one are the greatest," said registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Robin Vincent. The cost of the court, which will begin in March in Leidschendam, will amount to some $51.4 million in 2009, with Lebanon financing 49 percent of it. Use of the building, which formerly housed 700 intelligence staff, is sponsored by the Dutch state. In one corner of the gym, a former body-building room will be transformed into an interpreters' cabin that will provide simultaneous translations of the hearings into Arabic, French and English. Six holding cells will be constructed on the ground floor "to hold accused before their trials start [every morning] and at certain stages during the day," Vincent said. "Don't imagine that there will be six accused simply because we are constructing six cells," he warned.
Like all those brought before international tribunals in The Hague, the future detainees of the Lebanon tribunal will be held at the Scheveningen prison in a wing rented by the UN from the Dutch government. Currently, 18 staff members are preparing for the tribunal's opening, including a legal counselor, a language expert, and a defense adviser. But in a year's time, the tribunal will employ 305 staff, 105 of them in the service of the future chief prosecutor, Canadian Daniel Bellemare. The court will eventually have some 430 employees.