Hariri court to issue indictment soon

The US-backed tribunal probing the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri says the indictment will be released “very very soon.”

The newly-appointed Registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Herman von Hebel, said on Thursday that he expects the court’s prosecutor Daniel Bellemare to send a draft indictment to the pre-trial judge for confirmation very soon.

According to von Hebal, the indictment will be made public only after being confirmed by pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen and that the judge is expected to decide whether to confirm the indictment and issue arrest warrants, either under seal or by naming suspects publicly, in about six to ten weeks.

The STL Registrar said that preparations could take four to six months, giving a possible starting date for the trial as September or October 2011.

Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in a massive car bomb explosion in the capital Beirut in 2005 along with 22 others.

Giving no more details about the timing or content of the indictment, von Hebel — a Dutchman who has previously worked at tribunals prosecuting crimes in former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone — stressed that the tribunal would be indicting individuals and not organizations.

Since March 2010, von Hebel has served as the acting Registrar for the US-backed STL.

According to unconfirmed reports, STL plans to charge some members of Hezbollah in connection with the Hariri assassination.

The resistance movement, which has vehemently denied any role in the killing, has dismissed the US-backed tribunal as an “Israeli-American project” aimed at undermining the resistance movement and creating division in the country.