By
Willow Osgood
BEIRUT:
The defense teams for the four Hezbollah members indicted in the 2005 assassination
of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri have filed preliminary motions
challenging the jurisdiction of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the
U.N.-backed court announced Thursday.
Though
each of the defense teams representing Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badreddine,
Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra filed separate motions, many of their arguments
challenging the court’s jurisdiction overlap.
Among
the challenges, the motions argue that the U.N. Security Council abused its
powers by adopting Resolution 1757, which established the court, under Chapter
VII of its charter because the attack that killed Hariri and 22 others did not
constitute a threat to “international peace and security.”
According
to a statement released by the STL, Badreddine’s defense team argues in its
motion that “[t]he Security Council invoked a putative threat to international
peace and security in the case of Resolution 1757, merely as a formal step to
enable it to exercise its powers under Chapter VII of the United Nations
Charter, when no such threat existed ... That was an abuse of the Security
Council’s powers under the United Nations Charter.”
The
defense team of Badreddine filed its motion Thursday, while the three other
motions challenging the court were filed in recent days. The motions are part
of the pretrial phase, which began when the court decided in February to try
the accused men in absentia. STL President David Baragwanath has said that if
the court finds it has no jurisdiction, it will end its work.
Defense
counsel for the accused also argue in the motions that the agreement between
Lebanon and the U.N. to establish the court was illegal and violated Lebanon’s
Constitution.
Attorneys
for Oneissi say “Lebanon never consented to be bound by the ‘agreement’ which
was a) negotiated, adopted and signed on behalf of the Lebanese Republic by
persons acting without the requisite legal capacity, b) never ratified in
compliance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Lebanese Republic as
required by international law and c) consequently, never entered into force. As
a result, the ‘agreement’ is illegal and as such, shall not have any legal
effect.”
Other
challenges to the court focus on the charges of terrorism. The STL is the first
international tribunal to deal with terrorism as a distinct crime.
“The Security Council had
never before established an international tribunal to deal with terrorist
crimes, not even in the case of international terrorism (such as the events of
9/11). The Hariri killing was properly characterized as a political
assassination, which could only tendentiously be described as terrorism; it had
no aspect whatsoever of international terrorism,” Badreddine’s attorneys argue.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/May-11/173010-stl-defense-teams-challenge-tribunals-jurisdiction.ashx#axzz1uXzZXYcO
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