Defense Teams in Bid to Declare STL Illegal

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s Trial Chamber held a hearing on Wednesday on defense motions challenging the jurisdiction of the court.

The defense teams for the four Hizbullah members indicted in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri filed the separate motions last month although their arguments overlap.

The Hizbullah members Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badreddine, Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra remain at large.

Among the challenges, the U.N. Security Council abused its powers when it adopted resolution 1757 in 2007 because Hariri’s assassination could not in any sense be considered to pose a threat to international peace and security.

During the debate on the adoption of resolution 1757 no one referred to or used the term threat to international peace and security, said Badreddine’s lead counsel Antoine Korkmaz during the hearing.

The Security Council never used Chapter 7 in any of its resolutions on Lebanon, particularly in the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah which left thousands of people dead, said Emile Aoun, Ayyash’s co-counsel.

STL has been considered a tool to defeat a certain political party, he said.

“The super powers that control the Security Council have let it interfere in the internal affairs of certain countries.”

“This will destabilize international peace,” he added.

The defense teams also argue that the STL was established in flagrant violation of Lebanon’s constitution and its sovereign equality under international law.

The STL’s establishment “was not ratified by the parliament, and the president did not negotiate the agreement,” Korkmaz said.

The president was comprehensively sidelined in breach of article 52 of the constitution, which says the head of state negotiates and ratifies treaties, said Sabra’s lead counsel David Young.

Furthermore the defense teams argue that the Security Council coercively brought into force an agreement between Lebanon and the United Nations to set up the STL.

According to them, under international law, in particular the Vienna Convention, a treaty cannot be brought into force coercively, against the will of one of the state parties.

STL Chief of Prosecutions Daryl Mundis responded to defense claims that the tribunal has violated Lebanon’s sovereignty by saying that the state had never officially challenged the creation of the tribunal.

He added: “Under the circumstances at present, when we have a state that can bring up sovereignty issues and yet it hasn’t, we shouldn’t allow individuals to take that role and raise these issues.”

“The conduct of Lebanon showed that it accepted in principle the establishment of the STL,” he stated.

“We don’t have a situation where they (Lebanon) haven’t chosen to raise issues of sovereignty, but they have performed everything they have been required to do,” he explained.

The individual accused therefore "should not step in the shoes of the Republic of Lebanon", he said.

Addressing claims that the tribunal poses a threat to peace, STL Prosecutor Norman Farrell said: “Threat to peace is more of a political concept.”

He added that resolutions issued under chapter seven of the U.N. Charter are binding to member states, noting that Lebanon is a founding member of the organization.

The U.N. did not carry out any illegal activity in the establishment of the tribunal, he continued.

Furthermore, Farrell said that the Lebanese representative at the U.N. Security Council did not consider that Lebanon was being forced into a treaty regarding the adoption of the resolution under chapter seven.

The STL Trial Chamber then adjourned to Thursday morning the hearing on the court’s jurisdiction.