Countdown Starts: STL Says Indictment Very, Very Soon!

09/12/2010 Despite all question marks raised about the legitimacy and the credibility of the UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, everything signals that the countdown has already started…

Indeed, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Daniel Bellemare will issue his first indictment ‘very very soon’.

The declaration was made by the STL new Registrar Herman von Hebel who stated on Thursday that he expects the court's prosecutor to file his first indictment "very, very soon," without giving more details about the timing or content of the indictment, which will remain confidential until it is confirmed by a judge at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, likely early in 2011.

The STL Registrar spoke to a small group of reporters at the court's headquarters in Leidschendam in the Netherlands on Thursday, a day after the United Nations appointed him registrar for three years. He said that a trial could be staged around four to six months after an indictment is confirmed, a process that could take six to ten weeks.

Von Hebel, a Dutchman who has previously worked at tribunals prosecuting crimes in Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, stressed that the Hariri court will indict individuals and not organizations. "We are talking about individual criminal responsibility, not group responsibility," he pointed out.

Earlier on Thursday, STL spokesman Crispin Thorold said it will be weeks or even several months before the details of expected indictments are made public. He explained that the contents of the indictment will remain confidential until confirmed by pre-trial Judge Daniel Fransen, which could take "at least six to 10 weeks" from the time the indictments are submitted.

According to Thorold, once the indictment is submitted, it will be weeks before the names of the accused persons or any evidence against them would be released publicly. During that time, the pre-trial judge will review the indictment and any supporting material and clarify any legal issues before confirming or dismissing all or part of the indictment.

Also on Thursday, Lebanese daily An-Nahar asked STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare’s office about the time the indictment will be issued. The latter reiterated what head of the tribunal bureau in Beirut Wajd Ramadan had previously said. "The Prosecutor will issue a statement when he submits the indictment," the Lebanese daily quoted Bellemare’s office as saying, while advising Lebanese to "avoid speculations" about the investigation into Hariri's murder.

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