By Nicholas Blanford
A potentially explosive murder investigation which has gripped the Middle East for four years moves from Lebanon to the Netherlands today with the launch of a landmark international tribunal. The tribunal, established under the auspices of the United Nations, will judge the assassins of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister who died in a truck bomb explosion in February 2005, and of several anti-Syrian politicians and journalists murdered subsequently. “After four years of waiting and desperately fighting all kinds of resistance (to the tribunal’s formation) we have finally won this battle for truth and justice,” Marwan Hamade, a former minister, told TIME. Hamade narrowly survived a car bomb assassination attempt in October 2004, the first of the attacks included in the UN investigation.
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The burning question is whether top Syrian officials will be called before the tribunal. Syria, which politically controlled Lebanon at the time of Hariri’s death, remains the chief suspect in the murder. An initial report by a UN commission, which began investigating Hariri’s death in 2005, implicated several senior Syrian and Lebanese officials. Subsequent reports, however, have been scant on detail, and it remains unknown what evidence the commission has amassed. Daniel Bellemare, the head of the UN commission for the past year, is expected to continue the investigation when he takes up the role on March 1 as chief prosecutor for the tribunal.
Syria denies any involvement in Hariri’s death and says it supports an independent investigation. “Nobody wants to drown the investigation," said Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst. "On the contrary, in the best of all possible worlds, the Syrians want the probe to carry out, be neutral, and prove, at the end of the day, that Syria was innocent.”
It could be a long, tense and potentially dangerous wait before indictments are issued and trials begin. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon reportedly has said that the courtroom will be ready for trials at the beginning of 2010. Robin Vincent, the tribunal’s registrar, has said that the trials could last five years. In welcoming the launching of the tribunal, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said, “The Lebanese do not seek vengeance, they only wish to protect their country and prevent the terrorists from persisting in their crime unpunished.”
The tribunal is located in Leidschendam, a suburb of the Hague in the Netherlands. Eleven judges, four of them Lebanese, have been selected for the tribunal, although their names are being kept secret for now for security reasons. Preparations are being made for the transfer of suspects and witnesses to the Hague, and a witness protection program is being arranged.
Last week, a Lebanese judge freed on bail three suspects who were arrested in 2005. However, four generals who headed state security organs at the time of Hariri’s murder are to be extradited to the Hague within the next month at Bellemare’s request. The four generals, including the once powerful head of General Security, have been in custody for the past three-and-a-half years.
As the net closes in on the assassins, many in Lebanon are bracing for more instability. Lebanon already faces a tense period in the months leading to knife-edge parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7. “The establishment of the tribunal faced many difficulties, and I do think that as we get closer to the killers we might have more trouble,” Hamade said.
No other international tribunal has been established on the basis of one man’s murder (others such as those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia dealt with genocide and war crimes), making it unique in the relatively new field of international jurisprudence — and highly political as well.
Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, suggested that the tribunal was “politically selective” and that it should address the enormous number of other serious crimes committed in Lebanon in recent decades, especially during the 1975-1990 civil war. “The mandate is by far the narrowest of any tribunal of an international nature,” Amnesty said in a statement issued Friday.
Political bias has dogged the UN investigation since its inception. It is widely held that the UN investigation owes its existence to the interests of the U.S., which saw it as a useful tool to pressure Damascus into better behavior in Iraq, cease meddling in Lebanese affairs and to drop its backing for militant anti-Israel groups such as Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hizballah.
Even the probe’s closest supporters concede that if Israel had been the chief suspect in the Hariri murder, the investigation would never have existed.
Syria, however, has begun to emerge from its recent international isolation. On Friday, a senior State Department official met the Syrian ambassador to Washington, the first official contact in months. Washington also is considering appointing a new ambassador to Damascus. The previous ambassador was withdrawn in the wake of the Hariri assassination.
But a rapprochement with the West and the possibility of resumed peace talks with Israel could be derailed if the tribunal issues indictments for senior Syrian figures. Given the stakes, it is no surprise that suspicions have arisen of a deal being concocted in which the Syrian leadership is spared prosecution in exchange for progress on peace with Israel, loosening its close ties to Iran and an end to meddling in Lebanon.
The UN has established a committee to monitor interference in the judicial process and insists that the tribunal will remain impartial. In an open letter to the Lebanese, Bellemare said that he would “not be influenced by any political consideration.”
“Justice cannot and should not be used as a political tool,” he said. Reassuring words, perhaps, but many Lebanese continue to suspect that the cold realities of politics could trump the loftier cause of justice.
March 1, 2009 - Time - Lebanon on Edge as Hariri Tribunal Starts
March 1, 2009 - International Herald Tribune - Tribunal opens in killing of Lebanese prime minister
By MARLISE SIMONS
THE HAGUE:
A new international criminal court convened here Sunday with a mandate of identifying and prosecuting those responsible for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon and 22 others in a van explosion in Beirut in 2005.
The chief prosecutor of the tribunal, Daniel Bellemare of Canada, said he would soon ask Lebanon to transfer suspects and evidence and would continue his own investigations.
"As soon as I think I have enough evidence against someone or a group of persons, I will present an indictment," he said Sunday.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was set up by the United Nations Security Council because it was thought that political conditions in Lebanon did not make it possible for the government to carry out an independent inquiry leading to trials.
The case has been dominated by the perception that Syria ordered the assassination. Hariri had been a leading opponent of Syria's political control over his country. Protests after his killing forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after nearly three decades.
The first investigator, the German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, said the planners included high-level Lebanese and Syrian officials, among them members of the inner circle of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Mehlis's successors, Serge Brammertz from Belgium and Bellemare, have been far more cryptic.
Syria has denied any involvement.
The existence of a tribunal, operating outside Lebanon for security reasons, is expected to put pressure on Lebanese and Syrian officials to cooperate. As other international courts have shown, the threat of international arrest warrants can serve as sharp political tools. Some diplomats fear that if an investigation reached the top of the Syrian government, this could interfere with the thaw in relations between Damascus and the West.
Eleven judges, four of them Lebanese, sit on the tribunal, which means that the benches of both the trial chamber and the appeals chamber have non-Lebanese majorities.
Lawyers familiar with the court said the tribunal would start its work with a review of the cases against four Lebanese generals imprisoned in Beirut since August 2005 on suspicion of murder and terrorist acts. The four men were detained at the request of Mehlis but were never formally charged.
"This is a violation of UN standards, and the prosecutor now has two months to request all the evidence and ask for the transfer of the suspects," one lawyer said. "The judges will determine if he brings credible charges, or else they will release the detainees."
In recent days, three other suspects in the case, two Lebanese and a Syrian, were released by a Lebanese judge. Lawyers in The Hague said they did not know if others were in custody.
"We keep hearing different numbers; all of this has been surrounded by secrecy," another lawyer said. "Hopefully the tribunal can clarify all this."
The lawyers requested anonymity because of the court's rules.
The four generals, cited in Mehlis's reports as the top Lebanese security officials with close ties to Syria, are Raymond Azar, former chief of military intelligence; Ali Hajj, former chief of the Lebanese police; Jamil al-Sayyed, former director of internal security; and Mustafa Hamdan, former commander of the presidential guard.
Bellemare, the tribunal prosecutor, has disclosed little in his latest report except to say he has new evidence leading to other suspects. Any trial will follow Lebanese law for the crimes of terrorism and murder. But the UN-backed tribunal, unlike Lebanon, does not allow for the death penalty.
Lebanon will pay for 49 percent of the tribunal's budget, set at $51 million this year; other donors include France and the United States, which originally pressed for the UN inquiry. Other major donors are Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands, which all have seats on the court's management committee.
The tribunal can investigate attacks in Lebanon between October 2004 and December 2005.
On a recent visit to the tribunal, Robin Vincent, the court administrator, stopped at the center of the building.
"This is an ideal space to convert into a future courtroom," he said. Until then, a temporary courtroom will be used.
The tribunal has a three-year frame, but Vincent, a veteran of international courts like those in Sierra Leone and Cambodia, said the premises would be available for six years. "Experience," he said, "has shown that no tribunal has finished its work in just a couple of years."
March 1,2009 - The Guardian - Hariri tribunal to seek handover of Lebanese generals
Lebanon is to be asked to hand over four senior generals to the special UN tribunal set up try the killers of the former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri as proceedings get under way in the coming months.
The tribunal, which formally opened in The Hague today, is expected to spend three to five years trying a case that has potentially explosive political implications for the Middle East.
Hariri, a billionaire businessman, was assassinated in February 2005 in a suicide truck bombing in Beirut that also killed 22 other people. His death has been widely blamed on Syria, despite strenuous denials from Damascus.
Daniel Bellemare, the court's Canadian prosecutor, told al-Arabiya TV that he would make the handover request for the Lebanese generals within 60 days. The four, in charge of the country's police, intelligence service and an elite army unit at the time of the assassination, are the only people in custody.
"I have no reason to believe that the Lebanese authorities will not respond in a timely fashion to the request," Bellemare said.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, told the Guardian in a recent interview that he was not concerned by the start of the case, pointing out that he had co-operated fully with the investigation. But with the US president, Barack Obama, signalling his intention to end Syria's isolation as part of a new US Middle East strategy, developments in the case will be closely watched.
There is already nervousness in Lebanon that the Hague proceedings may trigger violence intended to prevent co-operation with it. Hezbollah, Syria's powerful Lebanese ally, opposes the transfer of the four officers to the tribunal.
The four are Major General Jamil Sayyed, former chief of general security; Major General Ali Hajj, former head of the internal security forces; Brigadier General Raymond Azar, former chief of military intelligence; and Brigadier General Mustafa Hamdan, former commander of the presidential guard.
The recent murder of an Lebanese airline pilot who delivered court documents from Beirut to The Hague is the subject of much speculation. Several Syrians with possible links to the assassination have been killed or apparently took their own lives.
The US, Britain and France, which supported the establishment of the tribunal, reiterated their commitment to it on the anniversary of the Hariri assassination last month, suggesting they will not permit to be used as a political tool.
"Now that the tribunal has taken on a life of its own there can be no deal," said Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanon expert at London's Chatham House. "It's not down to the US, or France or Britain any more. It's a UN process.
"But things can be delayed. Say if the tribunal indicts Syrians and they refuse to come, then the tribunal would have to go back to the security council to pass a new resolution that obliges Syria to comply. That could be vetoed, or delayed and certainly take a very long time."
The Hariri killing triggered mass protests, known as the Cedar revolution, that were backed by US and French pressure and led to the withdrawal of Syria's forces from Lebanon after nearly 30 years.
The first UN report on the case found "probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate Hariri could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials, and could not have been ... organised without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services". The names of two close Assad aides were mentioned in a draft document.
The court was set up by the UN security council in 2007 and comprises foreign and Lebanese judges. The names of Lebanese have been withheld out of fear for their safety.
If states refuse to hand over suspects the tribunal could hold trials in absentia, but only as a last resort.
Experts say it is likely that at some point the tribunal will face a "Lockerbie scenario", mirroring the situation when two Libyan agents were indicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103. Colonel Muammar Gadafy refused to surrender them for trial and only did so after years of UN sanctions and a discreet deal spelling out that the trial was of two individuals, not the regime they worked for.
Any suspects who are transferred to The Hague will be kept at the Scheveningen detention centre, which also houses suspects of the international criminal court and the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
