LEBANON:Holland has agreed to host the tribunal - but so far it is unclear just who will be prosecuted, writes Lara Marlowein Paris.
Progress is being made towards the establishment of an international tribunal to try the perpetrators of the bombing that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and 22 others on Valentine's day in 2005.
This week Saudi Arabia and two Gulf emirates pledged the final $21 million (€14.4 million) required to finance the tribunal, which has a $120 million (€82.4 million) budget for its three-year renewable mandate. "We're in the final stages of preparation," Judge Choucri Sader told a symposium on the tribunal in Paris this week. Sader is a Lebanese official who has liaised with the UN to establish the tribunal foreseen in UN Security Council resolution 1757 of May 31st, 2007.
Holland has agreed to host the tribunal in the former buildings of the Dutch intelligence service at Leidschendam, a suburb of The Hague.
The Canadian judge Daniel Belmar, the UN's special investigator into the Hariri assassination, will be the prosecutor. The identity of the judges, four Lebanese and six foreigners, is known to the UN, but has been kept secret for their safety.
Sader believes the tribunal will begin work in less than a year. Nicolas Michel, the UN undersecretary general for legal affairs, recently hinted that prosecution might start as early as June.
Last July the then special investigator, Serge Brammertz, reported that the worsening security situation in Lebanon was impeding the investigation. Prosecution cannot begin until the investigation is completed. Justice officials believe preventing the establishment of the tribunal is one objective of the continuing violence.
Judge Omar el-Natour, the director general of the Lebanese ministry of justice, said the tribunal will mean "the end of impunity" for those who have carried out more than a dozen further bombings and assassinations since Hariri's murder. The tribunal is unique in that it may prosecute other crimes "connected to" Hariri's assassination. It is a hybrid of Lebanese and international law, and will have the power to try suspects in absentia.
Resolution 1757 was passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, regarding threats to international peace and security, in order to circumvent obstruction by the pro-Syrian faction of the Lebanese government.
Sader said the tribunal constitutes a first step towards making acts of terrorism crimes under international law, comparable to crimes against humanity and genocide.
It is not clear who the tribunal will prosecute. Jamil al-Sayyed, Ali Hajj, Raymond Azar and Mustafa Hamdan - four Lebanese generals who co-operated closely with Syrian intelligence services - were arrested in August 2005 and are still in custody. "Sixty days after the tribunal begins, we must transfer the entire file to the prosecutor," Sader explained. Belmar could decide to prosecute them.
There is a widespread fear that a handful of scapegoats may be punished for the assassination, but that the tribunal will never reach the highest echelons of the Syrian regime, which Hariri's followers blame for the killings.
"Can the president of a foreign country be pursued by the tribunal?" asked a member of the audience at the symposium, in a clear allusion to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The German judge Detlev Mehlis, a former special investigator, revealed evidence that Assad's brother and brother-in-law were involved in the assassination.
Heads of state are immune to prosecution under Lebanese law, which will apply in the tribunal. But the prosecutor could initiate procedures against a president if he had evidence.
"It would be up to the president to come and say, 'I am protected by immunity'," Sader said. "What do people want? To lynch someone? Or for the whole world to know that someone is a criminal pursued by international justice? The most important thing is to point at the person who ordered the crime. That is more important for me than to see him in prison." The tribunal "represents a great hope within a blocked situation", said Rima Tarabay, who was Hariri's press attache.
Rafik al-Hariri had inordinate faith in the power of France, the US and the UN to prise Lebanon from Syria's grasp. "The Americans have told the Syrians that if anything happens to security in Lebanon, they will be held responsible," Hariri told me six weeks before his assassination.
Now honourable men like Sader perpetuate Hariri's faith in the international community.