According to a report on France 24, Lebanon’s current Prime Minister Saad Hariri (son of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was assassinated by bombing as his car drove in the Lebanese capital Beirut on 14 February 2005), has now admitted, in an interview with the London-based, Saudi-owned “Pan-Arab” newspaper AshSharq al Awsat, that: “At some point, we made a mistake … At one stage, we accused Syria of assassinating the martyred premier. That was a political accusation, and that political accusation is over … There is a (UN) court that is doing its job, and we for our part must reassess what happened … The tribunal is completely independent of our political accusations, which were made prematurely”… This report can be read in full here.
The France 24 report added that “The United Nations set up the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007 to find and try those behind the Hariri assassination. Preliminary reports by a committee of The Hague-based tribunal concluded there was evidence implicating Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services in Hariri’s murder but there are no suspects currently in custody”.
For several years, four Lebanese Generals were held by the UN Tribunal with no possibility of bail. Two Lebanese and one Syrian civilian were also held; they were released earlier than the four Generals.
The Hariri Tribunal was set up under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
One of our earlier posts on this UN project – now called the Special Tribunal for Lebanon — (“So, it wasn’t Syria” – posted on 29 March 2008 here) noted that the UN reported to the UN Security Council that “Evidence shows that a criminal network was responsible…”
On 29 April 2007, we tried to summarize part of an excellent article in Le Monde [written by two professors and a lawyer: Geraud de Geouffre de la Pradelle, Antoine Korkmaz (the lawyer) and Rafaelle Maison], in a post entitled “Critique of proposed international tribunal to judge Rafik Hariri’s assassins”, published here. Here are some excerpts:
[UN Truth translation: “It would be pointless to try to hide the political character of the UN Security Council — that’s how the UN Charter designed it. The SC enjoys a very large discretionary power [lawyers say this about judges] and there is no juridical oversight of the UN SC. What is of more concern is that the apparent respect for law hides, in fact, a great attack on freedoms without contributing to calming the internal situation in Lebanon. This is the case of the intiatives taken in the case of the Hariri affair. Before even being established, the special tribunal that is envisaged is aggravating the internal tensions in the country”.]
…
[UN Truth translation: “However, in the Lebanese case, there is no international crime, juridically speaking, and the current investigation has enough questionable qualities to wonder about how international justice is being used. Still very fragile, international justice hardly needs such misuse”.]
…
It states that the international independent commission of inquiry that was established by an agreement concluded between Beirut and the UN on 3 June 2005, following the adoption of UN SC Resolution 1595 of 7 April 2005 — and [UN Truth translation: “this 3 June 2005 UN-Lebanon agreement makes the international commission a sort of oversight body to which local (judicial and investigative) authorities are made subservient”.]
Then, on 29 March 2006, the UN SC adopted resolution 1664, which asked the UNSG to [UN Truth translation: “conclude, with the government of Lebanon, an agreement for the creation of an international tribunal based on the highest standards of international criminal law”.]
The subsequent proposed agreement transmitted by the UN to the Lebanese Government on 10 November 2006 states, according to Le Monde diplomatique, that [UN Truth translation: “this special tribunal would be composed of international judges and a minority of Lebanese judges. The prosecutor’s office would be an independent body composed of a prosecutor named by the UNSG, and an assistant prosecutor named by Beirut]”
The article’s second major argument was that:
[UN Truth translation: “The very special or particular competence of the international tribunal poses another very serious preliminary question. By the terms of the first article of the proposed statute, the tribunal will concentrate on the crime of 14 February 2005, which is termed a ‘terrorist act’ in the preambular paragraphs, and secondarily on other crimes committed between 1st October 2004 and 12 December 2005. However, other subsequent crimes could be added, if the Lebanese government and the UN SC permit. Up until now, these murders were considered a matter of Lebanese criminal law only … The creation of a criminal tribunal by the UN has so far been only to respond to the need to judge the most serious international crimes… {in the former Yugoslavia, for example, or in Rwanda, for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes} … whereas the special tribunal for Lebanon would be the first international court that would deal exclusively with crimes which are not of this category, and which are only ‘international’ because the UN SC so decided“.]
And, last but not least, our classic post on 18 December 2006, “Who is Ahmed Abu Adass?”, here, noted that the SG’s 12 December 2006 report on the progress being made into investigating the killing of Rafik Hariri (S/2006/962) had reported that: “The investigations into Ahmed Abu Adass have continued in this reporting period, focusing on a number of areas, including on the selection of Abu Adass for the role he played, as understood by the Commission at present. The mission is working to establish how Abu Adass was identified, where and when this occurred, who involved him in the operation and what happened to him afterwards. To further its investigation in this regard, the Commission has deconstructed the known time period from the time of Ahmed Abu Adass’ alleged involvement with certain individuals in late 2004 through the period of his disappearance in January 2005 to the time of the video being recovered on 14 February 2005. There are significant information gaps between known events on this timeline and the Commission is working to fill those gaps in order to establish the facts of Ahmed Abu Adass’ involvement in the crime” …