President of the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) David Baragwanath said during an interview that the
tribunal had no special jurisdiction to deal with the case of the so-called
“false witnesses,” unless the Lebanese government and the United Nations agreed
on providing them with further powers.
“The question now is should
the Tribunal be doing something about this? And the fact is we have no
jurisdiction over this,” Baragwanath said in a video interview posted on the
tribunal’s official website.
“If the government of
Lebanon and the UN and indeed the Security Council were to agree that we should
receive jurisdiction to deal with this topic, then of course we would,” he
added.
The STL president also said
that the tribunal would not pronounce upon the topic “unless and until” these
powers were provided.
The Netherlands-based UN
court probing the murder of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri has indicted four Hezbollah
operatives in connection with the murder but they have not surrendered to the
court.
Before the collapse of
former Prime Minster Saad Hariri’s cabinet in January 2011, the
Hezbollah-backed March 8 politicians had called for the government to task the
Justice Council with investigating the issue of witnesses who gave unreliable
testimonies. However, opposing March 14 figures said that the regular judiciary
should handle the matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment