The Hariri tribunal is turning out to be a waste of time, money & effort ...

Via Friday-Lunch-Club

"... Right now, officials of the UN Special Tribunal on Lebanon, the body charged with finding and trying Hariri's killers, are running around the world, cap in hand, pleading for money to keep going.  "We have cash-flow issues," admitted one insider, earlier today....... 

At the time, CBC revealed some of the telecommunications evidence upon which the commission was building its case against certain individuals, as well as an internal document pointing at the head of Lebanese intelligence (Wissam el Hassan) as someone who may have compromised the UN investigations. Since then, however, the political situation in Lebanon has changed dramatically...... But it hasn't met with much success ... Other countries have also waffled, promising to study the issue. In diplomatic language, governments are saying maybe, or no. Not a single Arab country will contribute a cent.

 

Last fall, the U.S. rushed in with $10 million in emergency funding for the tribunal, but at the rate it spends, that will soon be gone. And if America winds up as the tribunal's sole source of funds, it would only feed Hezbollah's claim that the whole thing is a conspiracy by Washington and the Israelis........

The tribunal's perhaps less-than-realistic view is that this is a judicial process, set up by the UN Security Council, that cannot be stopped. The money will come from somewhere and, if necessary, trials will be held in absentia....... Former UN investigators have told CBC News the evidence is mostly circumstantial — intricate telecommunications charts that show which phones called which other phones, but fail to actually put the phones in the hands of Hezbollah operatives. Further, the tribunal, which still operates a small office in Lebanon, concedes that the Lebanese government, meaning Hezbollah, basically knows every move its investigators make before they make it. Sounds like Hezbollah is winning, in other words. In fact, it's beginning to sound as if the whole UN effort might have been a waste of time....."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 4:57 PM

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