Special Tribunal for Lebanon: A Prosecutor's "Tunnel Vision"

Al Akhbar English, strong aletrnative to non Qatari non Saudi media, is out.

This is a link to the latest article on the Special UN Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) from Omar Nashabe.

The STL is the first international tribunal to indict someone for a terrorism crime. Instead of targeting suspects affiliated to internationally recognized terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, the first terrorism indictment is aimed at Hezbollah, a Lebanese resistance movement. This does not come as a surprise for those who monitor events in the Middle East. Hezbollah represents a threat to the security of Israel, something unacceptable to the United States and other Western powers. The investigation into the assassination of Hariri may have been a golden opportunity to undermine Hezbollah.

Shut down this tribunal

The latest two developments in the STL, who is assumed to be on the eve of indicting members of Hezbollah in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, add more to the discredit and the numerous political valses that marked the history of this tribunal for the last 4 years.

- Lebanese cabinet asks its minister of justice to investigate false witnesses to the tribunal...And this on the eve of the indictment...

- The elements of crime are fueling Academic publications when they seem to be ignored by the tribunal's investigators who, from the beginning, preferred to rely on witnesses...

Add to this the fact that Mr. Bellemare, the chief prosecutor, claims his ignorance of the geopolitical context of the country as an asset for the tribunal independence, and one can wonder what kind of truth will emerge from this tribunal?

The assassination of 150000 Lebanese and the disappearance of another 20000 will never have its own tribunal. This truth will never be told, and the victims are already forgotten. So I wonder what's with this country's sudden love for truth and justice?

What Lebanon needs is not a tribunal for the assassination of its ex prime minister. Lebanon needs truth and reconciliation for all Lebanese, and this should be done by Lebanese because no reconciliation is possible when justice or its semblance is delivered from the outside...

''There are some who spent $500 million in Lebanon to distort the image of Hezbollah*''

Hassan Nasrallah provided today substantial circumstantial evidence about a possible role for Israel in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. The evidence is made of confessions by Israeli spies captured by Lebanese authorities, video footage sent by Israeli drones to Israeli operations centers, which Hezbollah intercepted, personal info gathered from Syrian authorities, and associations with other sources.

Nasrallah's argument is that if the Special UN Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) ignores this circumstantial evidence then its credibility can be put into question as a fundamentally biased and politicized tribunal.

Since the beginning, Nasrallah said (around when Israel was first defeated by Hezbollah and left Lebanon in 2000), Israel tried to isolate Hezbollah with:
1) A story they planted through their spies that Hezbollah was trying to assassinate Hariri (naming a spy who fled to Israel since);
2) The sudden withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon under accusations Syria was behind Hariri's assassination;
3) The 2006 war when Israel hoped that inflicting huge civilian casualties in a short time on Lebanon will turn the tide against popular support for Hezbollah;
4) And now the special tribunal who is apparently going to accuse members of Hezbollah for assassinating Hariri.

Israel has the motive to create civil unrest and strife in Lebanon and to distort the image of Hezbollah. Will the special tribunal, who conducted his work in a very unprofessional way and who never turned its attention to Israel's role in the Hariri assassination, investigate ?

Nasrallah's early take on the info that members of Hezbollah were going to be indicted by the STL for the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

UPDATE, August 10th:
Rami Khoury on Nasrallah and the doctrine of reasonable doubt.

Israeli newspapers and Hezbollah enemies need nothing less than complete irrefutable proof from Nasrallah's evidence but isn't the tribunal's job to examine circumstantial evidence and find the proof?


An interesting analysis by Elias Muhanna in Foreign Policy.

Related: Israeli spies in Lebanon...

Karam's arrest has come as a shock to Lebanon, already reeling from a number of high-profile detentions of military and telecom employees, and has raised debate over how deeply Israel has managed to infiltrate and compromise Lebanon's security.

Three employees at state-owned telecom firms have been charged with spying, prompting Hezbollah to suggest Israel could have used telecom agents to manipulate phone records to implicate the group in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

*So said Hassan Nasrallah today in presenting his evidence for Israel's role in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, as reported by Al-Manar. $500million is the estimated cost incurred for the tribunal until now.

More to come...