08/12/2010 “We are not asking the other camp anything, because they know their duties. We have presented what we have and those who listened and are listening ought to understand what they want,” Hezbollah MP Mohamad Raad said at the end of a press conference Wednesday on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), its constitutional flaws, and politicization. In his introduction, Raad stressed the STL was politicized and did not observe the ‘highest international standards of criminal justice” as its mandate stipulated. He cited seven crucial flaws to support and prove the notion.
“Transgressing the Lebanese constitution, establishing the tribunal with disregard to the will and interest of the Lebanese people, disavowing its jurisdiction to try false witnesses, violating the confidentiality of the investigation, equivocally altering procedural regulations and rules, trespassing its specialty vis-à-vis requesting telecommunications data of the whole Lebanese people and regularly updating it, thus exposing the country to various intelligence bodies, and finally declaring the indictment would rely on circumstantial evidence that lack substantiative value,” MP Raad explained.
He also warned that the STL would become a crossing to ‘international guardianships’ on Lebanon, its stability, security, and sovereignty.” The outset of the tribunal, the MP added, was a ‘clear circumvention of the Lebanese law and transgression of the country’s sovereignty, with the encouragement of the international community to the then unconstitutional government (of Fouad Saniora) to practice a fait accompli authority, all to serve bigger policies.”
Next to MP Raad was Dr. Selim Jreissati, a Lebanese judge and former member of the Lebanese Constitutional Council. Dr. Jreissati explained the legal and constitutional flaws of the STL. I- TRANSGRESSING LEBANESE CONSTITUTION
The agreement between the United Nations and the state of Lebanon is an international covenant that stipulates the signature of the president of the republic and the endorsement of the parliament, however this was not the case with the STL.
“The establishment of the tribunal through UNSCR 1757 overstepped the authority of the president of the Lebanese republic (Emile Lahoud) and the constitution of Lebanon. It adopted a resolution by Fouad Saniora’s government that claimed that the majority in parliament supported the court; this is substantive forgery because the parliament never convened and never voted,” Jreissati said.
II- FALSE WITNESSES
MP Raad underlined how the STL disavowed its jurisdiction to prosecute false witnesses, knowing that “article 28 of resolution 1757 annex stipulates that the court will adopt the highest standards with regards to criminal (penal) justice.” 
Raad accused Bellemare’s legal team of seeking legal opinions to justify the court’s refusal to prosecute the false witnesses, at a time “they should have sought justifications to pursue them.”
For his part, Judge Jreissati confirmed that the STL had deliberately dropped the testimonies of the false witnesses “under the pretext of being given before the STL’s procedural regulations were put into effect.”
Worth mentioning, the testimonies of the false witnesses put the country on the brink of civil war and put behind bars, for four years, four top security generals on charges of involvement in the Hariri assassination; charges that turned out to be baseless.
III- CONFIDENTIALITY
“Violating the confidentiality of the investigation annuls the probe,” Dr. Jreissati said after MP Raad highlighted leaks to the press and official statements pertaining to the investigation.
“There were leaks to the Kuwaiti daily Assiyassa on the 21st of May 2005, France’s Le Figaro on the 19th of August, 2006, Assiyassa again on the 28th of March 2009, Germany’s Der Spiegel on the 23rd of May 2009, the Saudi Website Elaph on the 8th of July 2009, France’s Le Monde ont eh 14th of February 2010, and most recently Canada’s CBC channel, and they all appear to have been taken from close sources to the international investigation,” said Raad.
The Hezbollah MP concluded that the leaks were intentionally brought out by members of the international investigation team with the aim of fabricating lies and libeling the resistance, irrespective of the indictment’s time of issuance and content. “This is also how the STL did not observe the highest international standards of criminal justice.”
IX- SUSPICIONS AROUND RULES OF PROCEDURES AND EVIDENCE
MP Raad pointed out that the mandate of the STL ‘which was imposed on Lebanon based on UNSCR 1757 and under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter’ gives STL judges free reign to alter the rules of procedures and evidence as they see fit. “This contradicts with the principle of the observed regulations’ stability. The amendments, according to item 5 of the Rules of Procedures and Evidence, are possible with 7 votes of the 11 judges, thus marginalizing the Lebanese role since the number of Lebanese judges is only four, which renders them incapable of forcing or stopping any procedural amendments.”
X - REQUEST OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS DATA AND CONSTANT UPDATE
Dr. Jreissati supported MP Raad’s comments adding that “suspicion starts when court judges put their own rules of procedures and evidence and then amend them.”
“The Rules of Procedures and Evidence allow investigators to interrogate witnesses in a secret fashion with the absence of prosecution and defense representatives. They also give the court the right to reserve secret security information. This raises a critical question: What if Israel’s intelligence were the source of information?”
MP Raad also revealed that the general prosecutor’s office has been requesting complete telecom data from various security and governmental bodies in Lebanon. “The target is the constantly-updated mobile phone and text messages data of a wide section of the Lebanese people. What is the need of this data about the whole Lebanese people dating back to 2003 and not ending in 2010, five years after the assassination?
This is an extremely dangerous matter because the general prosecutor’s team comprises of people from different nationalities, including American, British, German, French, Australian, Pakistani, and Kazakh; this means that it is not known who is really taking advantage of this data.”
“There is absolutely nothing in the signed memos with the STL that imposes upon the government to deliver telecom data to the court,” Judge Jreissati said.
XI- ADOPTING CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
Dr. Jreissati stressed direct evidence were the most credible in any court and are fully in line with the high standards of criminal justice.
“The telecom data is considered circumstantial and can be refuted. It is in the lowest levels of criminal justice standards,” he said.
“According to STL president Antonio Cassese, solid evidence are usually not available in cases related to terrorism since it is hard to find them. This was also Bellemare’s opinion. This trend has made Lebanon, which has not seen internal stability since 2005, a field of experimentation and legal heresy.”
“In the system I come from, circumstantial evidence is a number of little facts that, when you look at them on their own, they might mean nothing. But when you put them together, then the whole picture becomes irrefutable […] I am strongly of the view that circumstantial evidence is more powerful than direct evidence,” Daniel Bellemare told Now Lebanon Website August 31, 2010. A couple of months ago, Hezbollah S.G. Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah presented video footage proving Israeli UAVs monitoring, on different occasions, ground zero where Hariri was killed. Israel acknowledged the authenticity of the footage.
However, “Bellemare said in a statement on the 24th of August, 2010, that Hezbollah’s indications about Israel’s possible involvement in the assassination of Hariri were incomplete. This proves that the international investigation had use circumstantial evidence in a very selective manner and consequently overlooked the high standards of criminal justice,” MP Raad stressed.
XII- THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THE TELECOM EVIDENCE
“International circles have confirmed that the telecommunications evidence was the pillar of the anticipated indictment, and this explains the STL’s persistence in defending circumstantial evidence,” MP Raad said.
MP Raad concluded the press conference saying: “A politicized court that is not committed to the high standards of criminal justice, transgressed the Lebanese constitution, established by and for international interests, disavowed its jurisdiction to try false witnesses, breached the confidentiality of the investigation, suspiciously amended its procedural rules, trespassed its mandate and sought after data, and adopted incomplete circumstantial evidence, is a court that we don’t expect justice from.”
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