Statesmanship is too important to be left to lawyers....
"U.S. President Barack Obomba expressed "solidarity" with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad CIA Hariri in talks on Wednesday amid the collapse of the coalition government in Beirut." - Obomba and Billary had no experience in statesmanship when they assumed office, but they are lawyers... The sorry results are well known. Legal thinking is not always the best guide to action, especially in politics which is the "art of the possible". Pushing the Hariri case and its utterly fake and fabricated and politicized "evidence" to the bitter legal end...in order to avenge the blood of the 241 US Marines killed in 1983 and the 58 French Paratroopers.... may result in a civil war in Lebanon...
What Israel failed to achieve during the wars of 82, 93, 96, 2000, and 2006 - basically to break or weaken Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon - it would try to achieve indirectly through the covert manipulations and fabrications of STL. The fact that it has not questioned USA or Israel in the Hariri affair and refused to arrest those confirmed as false witnesses, creates serious doubt about the United Nations-backed STL's credibility, with Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah calling it "an Israeli/American project" of deceit, deception and tyranny.....
http://maggiesnotebook.blogspot.com/2009/10/beirut-lebanon-marine-barracks-beirut.html
The result of civil war may be that Hezbollah will take over. This may even be divine justice, since by all real counts, the Shiites are the largest minority in the country, and might even have become a majority. To prevent Hizballah from taking over might require foreign intervention, after which the UN will come and devise a new constitution, including "one man one vote" elections, and lo and behold the Shiites will take over...., and why not? Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has shown tremendous Leadership qualities and should be commended... Happened in Iraq, so one doesn't need great imagination to see it coming. The Obama people should start looking around for some talent... There must be some in Antarctica...!
Meanwhile, the MSM Dogs everywhere will be unleashed soon to corroborate STL's Garbage findings....
It would be funny if it were not so diabolically criminal.....
http://ehrlum.com/wildbigsur/brief-history-war-peace.htm
http://tarpley.net/2011/01/16/tunisian-wikileaks-putsch/
.....
The Zionist psychological manipulators have perfected their system to the point where the American people/Some Lebanese and others.... are eager to accept the next lie coming from Washington, no matter how idiotic or inane it might be. They have discovered ways to make lies extremely addictive to the well-trained TV masses. The people don't have to be tricked into believing the lies dispensed by the "news," because they are eager to receive it... "News" and other "info-tainment", like MTV, Future, Lbc, NTV, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, CNN, NowLebanon, Beirutobserver..., and others in Lebanon, is a slow poison which we can't get enough of.... We have been fed the deceptive, addictive poison (Bible-based lies) about the Zionist state and its interaction with its neighbors in an i.v. drip for our entire lifetimes, teaching us to see everything from the Israeli point of view, and today, "some" cannot accept anything which contradicts this view....
Nearly all of us are heavily addicted to that "old time religion" a twisted ideology infused with religion, which comes through the TV as "entertainment," causing an adoration of the shitty little colony in the Middle East, compelling a majority of the American people to equate Israel with the "Kingdom of God." The level of insanity that can be tied directly to our distorted beliefs about the "Jewish state" is most apparent in our willingness, after nine years of waging war for the corporate Zionist interests to allow the Obama Administration to continue destabilizing Middle Eastern, EurAsian, and African countries....
The only thing new in today's latest coup d'état reports is the names of the latest victim countries... The CIA/MOSSAD's bloody hand is becoming apparent in every destabilization plot and in every "unity government" to suddenly appear after each new colored revolution... We will continue to follow the immoral, illegal path set by Bush and Cheney, launching wars of aggression in any direction we want, no longer disguised as "homeland defense," exposed for all to see as looting and pillaging operations in the finest barbarian tradition....
USA government is a monstrous, devouring beast, intent on raping every other government in existence, until ultimately, they all succumb to the wills of the sick Zionist bastards who have been having their way with the World...
The American people and the Free Peoples of this world will either learn to recognize the lies that USA's leaders spoon-feed them and take unified actions to shut them down at the source, or we will ultimately succumb to the venom that courses through our veins....
COUNTRY FOCUS: Israel home of the assassins associated with the infamous White House Murder INC,..... Top Israeli banks fund newspaper that calls for the establishment of extermination camps for Palestinians. Abe Foxman, where are you? [sound of crickets chirping]. Morris Dees? Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal Center? [more crickets chirping]. Well, the "salad bar" Zionists are very discerning, they pick and choose their "holocausts" to boost their organizations' bottom lines....
STL, a Tool of the crumbling/fumbling Empire of treachery, USA.
Our collective peril lies in the new ‘reality’ where evil can wrap itself in the words and images of light and a devious tool, "STL".... a charade tribunal...infested with western intelligence officers of a broken and crumbling Empire of utter corruption, the US of A.... That was how we lost dearly, since the advent of the Siamese twins CIA/MOSSAD and their infamous White House Murder INC, since 2002... In a world run by liars ‘doing the right thing’ is often the opposite.... If everyone else is doing it, it’s time to choose a different track....
This madness may be curable, but the treatment just became more costly, because Washington is unprepared for the morning after....
Increasingly, international legal critics of the STL are also highlighting flaws in the Special Tribunals Statute and Rules of Procedure. One Court Statue provision is particularly seen to be fundamentally inconsistent with international law, and which binds Lebanon, is Article 22 of the Tribunal’s Statute.
Article 22 allows for trials in absentia. One problem is that trying suspects in absentia is virtually unheard of among international ad hoc and ‘hybrid’ UN courts. In absentia trials have been consistently forbidden in international tribunals ever since the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Absentia trials were then, and ever since the end of WW II, have been condemned for the simple reason that in absentia trials allow for deep and broad politicization of the judicial process.
A careful reading of the STL Statute leads to the conclusion that not only does Article 22 authorize in absentia trials, but it requires them. As such, Article 22 violates Lebanon’s rights and obligations under international legal standards and practice. In absentia trials will almost certainly lead to the political corruption of fair trial standards and thus gives rise to legitimate grounds for Lebanon and other countries to withhold cooperation from the work of the Tribunal. In absentia trials also will delegitimize the work product of the Lebanon Tribunal leaving any resulting verdicts deeply flawed and likely rejected by international public and legal opinion.
How so?
The right to Habeas Corpus, being the fundamental right of a person to be present at trial is enshrined in Article 14(3)(d) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is binding upon Lebanon. It states that any person charged with a criminal offence has the right to be present at trial. This right is a minimum due process guarantee and it is required at all stages of the STL proceedings. The UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) ruled in Mbenge v. Zaire that everyone is entitled to be tried in his presence and to defend himself in person or through legal assistance. This provision in Article 14 cannot reasonably be said to always prohibit proceedings in absentia and sometimes international humanitarian law would allow them.
One case would be when the accused person, after being given actual notice of the charges, sufficiently in advance of trial, knowingly declines the habeas corpus right. The critical question, then, is precisely when departure from the norm in the fulfillment of this objective is justified and does the STL Statue violate international law? It is submitted that the Court’s reasoning in Mbenge v. Zaire is sound and once it is appreciated where the burden of proving the accused’s knowledge lies — that is, on the prosecution — it becomes plain that any argument based on the accused have received informal knowledge or constructive knowledge is bound to fail. Thus, as indicated by the Court in Mbenge v. Zaire, the accused must at a minimum be served with a summons if the STL Office of the Prosecution is to discharge its burden.
The case law of both the Human Rights Council and of the European Court affirms that, absent a right of retrial, actual notice of the proceedings on the part of the accused is a necessary condition in order for those proceedings to be compliant with Article 14(3)(d) of the ICCPR or Article 6 ECHR. Therefore, under the relevant rules of international law binding upon Lebanon, absent an unfettered right of retrial, which the STL Statute does not provide, it is impermissible to commence a trial in the absence of the accused unless it can be demonstrated that, at the very least, the defendant had actual and direct knowledge of the proceedings. Meaning he/she must be personally served a summons.
In additions, Article 14(3)(d) of the ICCPR, read in light of the subsequent practice concerning trials in absentia in many jurisdictions, indicates that (subject to retrial at the accused’s option) a court may not commence or proceed with a trial unless the prosecutor is able to establish that the accused possessed actual knowledge of the proceedings and intended to waive his right to be present.
Article 22 STL Statute, entitled ‘trials in absentia’, provides as follows:
- The Special Tribunal shall conduct trial proceedings in the absence of the accused, if he or she:
- Has expressly and in writing waived his or her right to be present;
- Has not been handed over to the Tribunal by the State authorities concerned;
- Has absconded or otherwise cannot be found and all reasonable steps have been taken to secure his or her appearance before the Tribunal and to inform him or her of the charges confirmed by the Pre-Trial Judge.
Another of the problems with Article 22 is the real likelihood that ‘the State authorities concerned’ may have ‘failed’ to hand over the accused for various legitimate reasons. For example, how can it be known which State authorities are “ concerned” given that the whereabouts of the accused person would likely be unknown. Moreover, as a simple matter of public international law, Countries are under no obligation whatsoever to extradite suspects for trial in another Country. To do so is arguably unlawful in the absence of an extradition treaty providing a basis in law for such an extradition. International law does not permits canceling an individual’s right to appear at his own trial on the basis that some third state (possibly hostile to the accused or relevant Country) has not done a positive act that it is under no obligation to do. Also, the fact that a Country may have refused to extradite an accused person is immaterial when it comes to the critical question of whether the accused himself knew of the proceedings against him and voluntarily elected not to attend.
It is possible that the international community will tire of the STL, given all the tribunals perceived defects, long before any verdicts are achieved or appeals exhausted. It remains to be seen what becomes of the original objectives contemplated by UN Security Council Resolution 1757 as serious questions are increasingly raised about the wisdom of the UN stamping its imprimatur to a widely known US-Israel project in the first place....created solely to defame, and deligitimize the Lebanese Nationalist Resistance of Hizbullah.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9009
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23362
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