Hariri Case to be Transfered to The Hague
The prosecutor in a U.N. court that hopes to try the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri asked Lebanon to hand over the case to the international tribunal, but the request did not include the transfer of the four generals suspected of involvement in the 2005 assassination.
A statement said the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Daniel A. Bellemare, filed an application today (Wednesday) urging the pre-trial judge to ask Lebanese authorities to "defer to the tribunal”s competence."
It said Lebanese officials should also "hand over to the prosecutor the results of the investigations and a copy of the relevant court records and other probative material; and submit to the pre-trial judge a list of all persons detained in connection with the investigation."
The STL was the first international terrorist court, created in 2007 by a United Nations Security Council resolution in 2007. It began work outside The Hague on March 1.
It is charged with trying the alleged authors of terrorist attacks in Lebanon, including the murder of Hariri and 22 other people in a bomb attack in February 2005.
Bellemare had two months from March 1 to submit his request to the Lebanese authorities.
Four Lebanese generals, detained since August 2005 as part of the investigation into the Hariri assassination, remain at Roumieh prison east of Beirut. The first two reports from the U.N. committee of inquiry set up two months after the killings of Hariri found evidence of involvement by the Syrian intelligence services.
Meanwhile, pan-Arab daily Al Hayat on Thursday said no progress has been made toward the Memorandum of Understanding between Lebanon and the international tribunal.
It said a revised version of the proposed text did not receive a response from Hizbullah.
"Does that imply that Hizbullah rejects the idea of the memorandum of understanding in principle?" Al Hayat asked.