January 12, 2010 - Naharnet - Special Tribunal for Lebanon Registrar David Tolbert Resigns

The registrar of the tribunal created to try the assassins of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri has resigned, the U.N. said Tuesday -- the second registrar to leave in less than a year. "The (U.N.) Secretary-General received the resignation of the registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on January 6, 2010," a statement from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson said on Tuesday. David Tolbert's resignation will be effective from March 1, after which he will take up his new appointment as president of the International Center for Transitional Justice. "The Secretary-General regrets the departure of Mr. Tolbert, who has decided to return to the United States to pursue his career," said the statement. Tolbert, a former deputy prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, took over as the Lebanon tribunal's main administrator in August last year from Briton Robin Vincent who resigned two months earlier. The tribunal was created by a 2007 U.N. resolution to try those responsible for a 2005 Beirut car bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people. Damascus, implicated by a U.N. probe, has denied involvement. The tribunal has no suspects in custody and no date has been set for the start of any trial. It officially opened in The Hague on March 1, 2009. Hariri was prime minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 until his resignation in 2004.