BEIRUT: The Special Tribunal for Lebanon prosecution has two days to submit a progress report related to the arrest of the four suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
“The Trial Chamber has given the Prosecution until 16 Dec. to submit a progress report on this material,” the STL said on its Twitter account Wednesday, referring to documents Beirut submitted in response to requests for assistance.
“The Requests for Assistance relate to measures the Prosecution considers necessary to locate and arrest the 4 accused,” the STL said in response to a question by The Daily Star on the popular micro-blogging site.
The international court said the material submitted by Beirut consisted of some “425 pages of material in Arabic and a large number of emails on a CD to the Prosecution.”
Four Hezbollah members are accused of involvement in the assassination of Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. The four were named in an indictment issued in June by STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare.
The STL has described Lebanon’s efforts to arrest the suspects as insufficient, which had prompted then-STL President Antonio Cassese to have Lebanon submit to the court a monthly update on its efforts to arrest the four suspects, which Hezbollah says will not be apprehended but tried in absentia instead.
On Nov. 11, during a trial chamber hearing focusing on the viability of in absentia trials, the prosecution asked the court to question Lebanese authorities on why the four suspects had not been arrested yet.
In one of its tweets Wednesday, the STL said: “During 11 Nov hearing [the] Prosecution said Lebanon needs to intensify efforts to arrest accused & presented Lebanon [with] 10 Requests for Assistance.”
“This is part of the Trial Chamber's deliberation on whether or not to begin in absentia proceedings.”
The international tribunal, based in The Hague, has been the subject of fierce political debate in Lebanon, even after the country paid its share of the funding of the court's budget.
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