March 25, 2009 - Naharnet - STL Appoints President, U.N. Chief Names Head of Defense Office

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon announced on Tuesday the appointment of Italian Judge Antonio Cassesse as tribunal president and the adoption of a set of procedural rules.Both Cassesse and Belgian pre-trial magistrate Daniel Fransen will assume their duties full time in the near future, the STL said in a statement. It added that the tribunal has set "the rules of procedure, evidence and arrest in addition to drawing up the guidelines for the appointment of a defense attorney." Cassese was born in 1937 and was the first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1997. In New York, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed French François Roux as head of STL's defense office, the STL said. Roux was later sworn in. "The STL's judges, public prosecutor and the registrar were recently sworn in," it added. The names of the remaining nine judges will "be announced once security measures are fully in place for their protection," the STL said. Four of the 11 judges are Lebanese. The international tribunal to try the suspected killers of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri opened on March 1 with pledges to provide justice to victims of terrorism. The tribunal was created by a 2007 U.N. Security Council resolution and will apply Lebanese law. It has an initial, renewable, three-year mandate. The attack on Hariri on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war and led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops after a 29-year presence.