Lebanese ministers shun Hariri tribunal

Fri Mar 4, 2011

The controversy over the US-backed Tribunal probing the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri continues to charge Lebanese politics.

More and more ministers are refusing to cooperate with the US-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), questioning its credibility, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Hariri, along with 22 others, was assassinated on February 14, 2005, when explosives equal to around 1,000 kilogram of TNT were detonated in downtown Beirut.

Lately, caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has been confronted with the case of four ministers in the outgoing cabinet who refused to hand in documents demanded by Danile Bellemare Fransen, the STL prosecutor.

Lebanon's caretaker minister of telecommunications Charbel Nahhas said Wednesday he had ignored several requests by Bellemare to cooperate with the court because they were “contrary to Lebanese law as concerns the secrecy of phone records and immunity given to deputies and presidents.”

Nahas said he had transferred the STL request to the council of ministers, which cannot convene given that it is an outgoing cabinet.

According to some reports, the prosecutor had even asked for the fingerprints of over four million Lebanese, basically every single citizen in the country.

In that respect, law experts say that Lebanese law does have a say in the debate.

An international lawyer, Franklin Lamb, said: "When Nahhas rejected the request, I think he was on solid ground under Lebanese law, because Article 106 of the privacy law may be violated by that."

Nahas' refusal to cooperate was reflected in an infuriated statement made by the March 14th coalition which condemned ministers' “refusal to supply STL prosecutor with the documents he needed for his investigation.”

The March 14th is worried that with it out of the cabinet, the memorandum of agreement signed by the then Prime Minister Fouad Seniora government in 2007 could become annulled in the next cabinet headed by PM-designate Najib Mikati.

The March 8th alliance has strongly challenged the constitutional legality of the memorandum since it was not approved by the Parliament nor signed by the president at the time.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/168094.html.