Lebanon calls for more funding for Hariri probe
European and Arab countries that benefit from trade with Lebanon should contribute more funding to the investigation into former prime minister Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, the Lebanese justice minister says.
The three-year probe is coming to an end and a special international court is on track to open in the Netherlands in January, Ibrahim Najjar, a widely respected lawyer who took the justice portfolio in the new national unity government, told the Financial Times.
The joint United Nations-Lebanese tribunal is projected to cost $40m for each of the three years it is expected to sit. By contrast, the annual budget of the entire Lebanese justice system is $30m. Only 30 per cent of the tribunal’s funding has so far been raised.
”If you consider the commercial and trade relations between Lebanon and some European countries, their commitment to pay $1m is the least one can expect from them and that we would highly appreciate it if they did their best to be at the level we expect,” said Mr Najjar.
The EU is Lebanon’s largest trading partner, accounting for 34 per cent of all goods and services flows, with France making up about 13 per cent of that figure. Trade is overwhelmingly dominated by EU exports to Lebanon, which comprised more than €3bn of last year’s €3.9bn worth of trade.
”The same could be said about some Arab Gulf countries,” said Mr Najjar, who also singled out Russia as a country giving the bare minimum in order to maintain good ties in the rest of the region.
”Russia is becoming a friendly country to Lebanon and it is becoming a rich country with all their oil revenues,” he said. ”I am sure that our Russian friends could pay more than $500,000 and I am sure that they would like to encourage the implementation of justice in this region.”
Moscow maintains strong relations with Damascus, which has been accused of engineering the huge car bomb that killed Hariri in February 2005. Syria denies all involvement but the political upheaval that followed the attack led to the end of Syria’s 30 year presence in Lebanon.
Daniel Bellemare, the chief UN investigator, is due to present a final report on Hariri’s assassination to the Security Council by the end of this year but Mr Najjar said that even if the investigation was not complete, the special court would open in the Netherlands in January regardless.
Mr Najjar said the inquiry could not have been carried out more efficiently. ”This was a huge and very unprecedented criminal act with a lot of difficulties to clear up. If you go to court, you have to have a good and well-built case.”
Mr Najjar rejected the controversy about the continued detention of four Lebanese generals, who were the heads of the major security services at the time of the assassination, and who have been in jail without charge since September 2005.
The Lebanese criminal code, he said, allowed for people suspected of threatening the public order with a terrorist attack to be held in custody until the inquiry was finished.