The U.N. General-Secretariat has released “instructions” to prepare for the possibility that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon pre-trial judge would confirm the indictment in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination case in July, a high-ranking official in New York said.
The official told An Nahar daily published Friday that Judge Daniel Fransen would issue the indictment “within weeks and most probably at the beginning of next month.”
The indictment is expected to name low-ranking Hizbullah officials in addition to other people after STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare added new names to the amended amendment that he filed to Fransen for approval last month, the official said.
But he refused to say whether the names include Syrian nationals.
The General-Secretariat “is bracing itself for such an announcement and has issued instructions for readiness if the court decides to unveil the indictment and begin trials,” the official told An Nahar.
According to the report, western diplomats at the U.N. have expressed “frustration” over the delay in the operations of the tribunal. But “they can’t do anything about it” because they know that they “don’t have the power to interfere or influence its work.”
A diplomat at the Security Council quoted British ambassador Sir Mark Lyall Grant as saying at a closed-door session that it was frustrating to see the delay in the pre-trial proceedings of the court given its high expenses.
Asked by An Nahar if members of the Council had any new information about the tribunal, a western diplomat said that he was “frustrated at the way the management of the crisis linked to the STL was carried out.”
He said he “rejects to expect anything from such institutions.”
According to the diplomat, Bellemare told him a year ago that “trials will begin and summonses will be issued in October (2010) and then he said in November … We are at the start of June and nothing has happened yet.”
“Such institutions … could be managed in a better way,” the diplomat added.
No comments:
Post a Comment