By Hussein Dakroub
Wednesday, March 02, 2011

BEIRUT: Four members of Lebanon’s caretaker Cabinet have turned down requests from the prosecutor general of the U.N.-appointed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to provide information and documents, in breach of the cooperation protocol signed with the United Nations, sources close to the STL told The Daily Star Tuesday.

The requests made by Prosecutor General Daniel Bellemare were sent last month from Bellemare’s office in Beirut to the office of caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who passed them on to caretaker Public Works Minister Ghazi Aridi, caretaker Energy Minister Jibran Bassil, caretaker Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud and caretaker Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas.

But the four ministers have not yet complied with the requests, the sources said.
The STL has requested a meeting with Lebanese ambassador to The Hague Zeidan Saghir on March 7 to discuss the issue.

In the meantime, The Daily Star has learned that Bellemare is contemplating measures against the ministers who declined to cooperate with his requests, such as listing them by name as uncooperative.

Hariri sent letters to the four ministers on Feb. 24 urging them to provide the requested information and documents so that Lebanon would not be accused of not cooperating with the tribunal and not complying with its obligations under relevant U.N. resolutions. Copies of those letters have been obtained by The Daily Star.

The Netherlands-based STL was set up by the U.N. Security Council in 2007 to investigate the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others killed when a bomb exploded in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005. Under the cooperation agreement signed with the U.N., Lebanon promised to provide any assistance, information, data and documents requested by the tribunal.

In his letter to Aridi, Hariri urged the caretaker minister to permit U.N. investigators to question some ministry employees as witnesses and provide the requested documents as soon as possible in accordance with the Lebanese government’s commitment to cooperate with the STL.

In his letter to Bassil, Hariri reminded the caretaker energy minister in his capacity as former telecommunications minister that the Lebanese government and relevant authorities must facilitate the tribunal’s work and prevent the obstruction of the course of justice.

“In order not to put the Lebanese government and its relevant authorities in the position of refraining from complying with international obligations and U.N. resolutions and their subsequent consequences at various levels, we call on you to act immediately to meet the demands of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon concerning the telecommunications data and inform us of the results,” Hariri said in the letter.

In his letter to Baroud, Hariri urged him to help Bellemare’s Beirut office obtain some information and documents at the departments of the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities.

Hariri called on Baroud to quickly meet the prosecutor’s request in order to avoid giving any signal the Lebanese government and its relevant authorities were not cooperating with the tribunal.

Hariri urged Nahhas to act immediately to provide the requested telecommunications data to the tribunal.
“Any reluctance to fulfill the requests of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will, intentionally or unintentionally, send a clear signal about the Lebanese government’s rejection or abstention to implement international resolutions issued by the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council,” Hariri said in his letter to Nahhas.

Meanwhile, Parliament sources indicated that Nahhas told Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri Tuesday that he has stopped meeting the demands of the U.N. Investigation Commission since last year’s speech by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in which he called on the Lebanese government and officials to boycott the STL and not cooperate with the commission.

Nahhas explained to Berri that Bellemare had requested comprehensive information about telephone conversations among the Lebanese, including ministers and lawmakers, and that this violated the public freedom and eavesdropping law, the sources said.

Nahhas told Berri that the data in Bellemare’s possession was unofficial and did not carry the signature of any telecom company. He said that Bellemare, in his new request to the Telecommunications Ministry, wanted this data to be official and signed according to the rules so that it can be adopted as a legal document at the STL and used as evidence in the draft indictment handed over by Bellemare to pretrial judge Daniel Fransen in January, the sources added.

Following Nahhas’ refusal to cooperate with the UN Investigation Commission, Lebanese security and judicial authorities directly approached the telecom companies which supplied Bellemare with unsigned data, telecommunication sources said. Nahhas rejected Bellemare’s request for signed data, the sources said.
Sources close to Nahhas said that the U.N. Investigation Commission’s demands violated the telephone privacy law No. 120 which has not been implemented since it was approved in 2005 because of disagreements over its wording.