Hariri tribunal established, UN says
The United Nations said Monday it had completed the panel of judges slated to oversee the prosecution of the formal investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, over three years after his Feb. 14, 2005 killing.
The U.N. Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel said the panel consisted of 11 judges, with four Lebanese judges sitting on the panel. Michel noted the drafts outlining the procedural rules were completed and stressed the court would “have teeth” – or the power to issue arrest warrants for suspects.
Michel noted that many involved in the plot possibly lived outside of Lebanon and urged the international community to practice solidarity with the tribunal so it “would not remain helpless and inactive.”
A U.N. commission said Friday that a “criminal network” was behind the plot to assassinate Hariri and that it was connected with other acts of political violence in Lebanon, though it moved away from implicating Syrian interests in the plot.
It took over three years just to sit a panel of judges on this one. With Lebanon stepping every closer to the political turmoil that brought the country to a decades-long civil war, the international community, and the investigatory panel, need to open the door on the complex web that is the Lebanese confessional system once and for all.