According to a statement issued by the tribunal’s press office, STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare submitted the confidential indictment Monday against suspects in the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
"The prosecutor of the tribunal has submitted an indictment and supporting materials to the pre-trial judge," the tribunal said in a statement in The Hague, where it is based for security reasons.
Bellemare presented the documents, widely believed to unfairly implicate Hezbollah, to the tribunal's registry at 4:35pm (15:35 GMT), it said.
They "will now be reviewed by the pre-trial judge, Daniel Fransen", who has to confirm the charges before any arrest warrant or summons to appear can be issued.
The pre-trial judge should need six to 10 weeks to confirm the charges, tribunal registrar Herman von Hebel told journalists in The Hague in December. He could also decide to reject the indictment in whole or in part, or ask the prosecutor for additional information. A trial could follow "four to six months" after the confirmation of the charges, according to Von Hebel.
The STL's amended rules allows for a trial to be held "in absentia", meaning without the accused being present, if arrests are impossible.
INDICTMENT RELEASE PART OF POLITICAL EXPLOITATION
The submission’s timing is believed as well to have political meanings, especially after the collapse of the Lebanese government headed by Saad Hariri following the “death” of the Syrian-Saudi initiative aimed at dealing with the repercussions of the indictment.
“I reassure those who are still after this project that they are miscalculating,” Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out. “We tell those who believe they can use the indictment to target the resistance that they are extensively miscalculating.”
“I will have another speech in light of what Bellemare will issue in the next couple of days,” Sayyed Nasrallah concluded.
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Hariri tribunal indictment
Basically, we are told to believe that while the widow of Hariri and his children were willing to scrap the tribunal the US insisted that it goes forward but NOT for political reasons in order to serve Israeli interests by pinning the blame on its enemies on Lebanon, but purely for emotional reasons because Obama, Bush, Feltman, and Hillary are so emotionally distraught over the death of Hariri--who is not dead enough as far as I am concerned--that they really want to find the real culprits because they can't sleep at night. I believe that. Oh, yeah. Just as I believe that the Obama administration support the choice of the Tunisian people for their leaders--after but not before--the ouster of their pro-US dictator.
Hariri Tribunal
And the fact that the opposition could buy these audiotapes from the ITL investigators themselves speaks volumes about the corrupt and criminal nature of the tribunal."
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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