The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) asked the United Nations Security Council on July 13 to rule on the follow-up to the ongoing trials. Charged with trying the perpetrators of terrorist attacks committed in the 2000s against Lebanese politicians and journalists, the STL no longer has the financial means to continue its trials beyond July 31, its officials say. Governed by an agreement signed between the Lebanese government and the UN in June 2007, the STL is 51% funded by voluntary contributions from states, including France, meeting within a management committee chaired by the British. The remaining 49% is the responsibility of Lebanon.
The settlement of the annual bill has always given rise to heated debates in Beirut, but this time it was the economic crisis that got the better of Lebanon’s participation. And not the political games that, in the past, had forced the government to settle its quota on special funds to bypass Parliament, where Hezbollah deputies, whose members were targeted by the Tribunal, gave voice . Formerly volunteers, the other states, Westerners and Gulf countries, have also left the ship.
To close, however, the two cases still pending in Leidschendam, a suburb of The Hague, in the Netherlands, where this court sits, must be liquidated. One concerns the appeal filed by the prosecutor and the defense against the judgment rendered in August 2020 in the attack against former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2005 in Beirut. Only one of the four defendants, Salim Ayyash, had been convicted. In the second case, it is the same man, a member of Hezbollah, who is being prosecuted in absentia, for his responsibility in the attempted attacks against the former minister, Marwan Hamadé in October 2014, against the politician and businessman Elias Murr in July 2005, and in the assassination of George Hawi in an attack committed in June 2005.
The trial, which should have started on June 16, has been suspended for lack of funds. The judges must now decide the follow-up to the case, but have decided to refer the matter to the UN. “The Special Court was established by a resolution of the United Nations Security Council, the future of the Special Court must therefore be determined by the Security Council”, they write in a decision of July 13, sent to the United Nations. This scenario has long been feared in New York: it would force the capitals, including Paris and Washington, at the origin of this tribunal, to interfere directly in legal proceedings.
You have 61.18% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
