Is the Special Tribunal for Lebanon covering up the bribery of witnesses?
by alethoAl-Akhbar | May 15, 2014
The
Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) does not miss an opportunity to
undermine its credibility and damage its image. This behavior is not
restricted to the public prosecutor’s office, but to the trial chamber
itself, which is supposed to be keen on implementing justice and
presenting a positive image of the tribunal to the public.
The
latest development is a decision issued by the tribunal’s First
Chamber, which is in charge of trying the defendants in the
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The
decision stipulated concealing the amount of money that the public
prosecutor’s office pays to witnesses under the rubric of “expenses.” On
May 9, the tribunal issued a decision granting the prosecution’s office
the right to conceal the amount from the defense teams.
The
decision came after the defense team for Hussein Oneissi requested that
the tribunal order the prosecution’s office to disclose information it
has on whether two of the public prosecution’s witnesses or members of
their families were paid money from the office itself, from the
international investigation committee or from the Lebanese authorities.
Oneissi’s defense team argued that the issue is relevant to its defense
strategy since it casts doubt on the credibility of some of the
witnesses the public prosecutor is going to present to the court. After
deliberations, the court decided to keep the matter a secret and not
force the public prosecutor to disclose the information.
According
to the decision, the tribunal reviewed similar cases in other
international courts whereby it became evident that courts cover the
expenses and costs of witnesses living in the Netherlands. Besides, some
international courts (and national ones, according to the STL’s First
Chamber) have developed clear standards under which they pay the
“expenses of the witnesses.” It added that some courts pay the witness a
monthly stipend in lieu of their salary that they were receiving as
compensation for moving to the Hague to testify. The amount is
equivalent to the minimum wage that a United Nations employee earns in
the country where the witness comes from. The tribunal pointed out that
it reviewed the amounts that the prosecution’s office paid as expenses
to the witnesses and found them “reasonable.” It added that the defense
team did not present proof that the two witnesses received sums beyond
what is deemed reasonable. Therefore there is no need to reveal how much
was paid as expenses to them.
But
neither the prosecution nor the tribunal were able to rule out whether
the two witnesses or one of them or members of their families received
money from parties other than the prosecution’s office. This will
continue to be a point of contention in the future because of how deeply
it affects the credibility of the witnesses’ testimonies, especially
those that the public prosecution is going to present as witnesses to be
relied on to convict the defendants even though their testimonies have
changed from one stage of the investigation to another.
In
another matter, the public prosecutor gave a bizarre excuse for not
giving the defense team of one of the defendant’s documents it requested
that include information on students at one of Lebanon’s universities
between the years 2004-2005 in addition to information about specific
individuals at the same university in 2006. The public prosecution’s
office had received this information from the Lebanese authorities which
never denied any of the former’s requests. The public prosecutor cited
several reasons for turning down the defense team’s request including
the claim that this information would enable the defense team to breach
the confidentiality of one of its witnesses.
But
the most bizarre and most laughable excuse is the public prosecutor’s
claim, in his letter to the tribunal on May 9, 2014, that handing over
this information to the defense team might “violate the privacy of these
students.” Let’s remember that the public prosecution’s office had
insisted on getting the Lebanese people’s telecom data, health records,
university records, travel records, insurance records and market
licenses and - as experience has shown - was unable to protect its
records and prevent them from being leaked. This same office is now
claiming to care for the privacy of Lebanese students in order to
prevent the transfer of information about them to their own colleagues -
the defense lawyers - at the tribunal.
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