The daily Star - STL refuses to confirm media reports on new indictment, February 18, 2012

BEIRUT: The Special Tribunal for Lebanon spokesperson refused to confirm Friday local media reports that the court’s prosecutor had filed a draft indictment in three cases to the pre-trial judge.

Marten Youssef only said that it was up to the prosecutor alone to decide when to file an indictment for review. “It is also his prerogative to file it confidentially and ex-parte, in which case, we would not be privy to that filing,” he told The Daily Star.

Quoting sources close to STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare’s office, Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Friday that Bellemare submitted recently to Judge Daniel Fransen a draft indictment in the attempted assassinations of former Deputy Prime Minister Elias Murr and MP Marwan Hamadeh, as well as in the assassination of former Lebanese Communist Party leader George Hawi.

In October 2004, Hamadeh was seriously injured in a car bomb attack in Beirut. Hawi was assassinated on June 21, 2005 while Murr survived an assassination attempt on his life on July 12 of the same year.

A judicial source told The Daily Star that Lebanon had received no official information on the matter.

If the media reports prove accurate, Fransen would assess the indictment and could ask the prosecution for additional material if it is not sufficient.

The local newspaper said that Bellemare, who is leaving his post at the end of February, also submitted additional documents related to the STL’s indictment in the case of the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Al-Akhbar said that a fifth person might be indicted in Hariri’s case.

Last June, four members of Hezbollah – Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hasan Oneissi and Assad Hasan Sabra – were named in an indictment by the U.N.-backed court, which was established in May 2007 to investigate and try Hariri’s assassins.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah strongly denies any involvement of his party in Hariri’s assassination, dismissing the court as an “American-Israeli” tool targeting the resistance. The Hezbollah leader had vowed not to hand over the indicted “even in 300 years.” The dispute over the STL led to the collapse of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Cabinet in January last year.


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