STL: Indictments and Some Personal Info

Indictments to come between September and December 2010 and some personal info from Cassesse, the Daily Star reports:

Special Tribunal for Lebanon prosecutor Daniel Bellemare plans to file charges this fall, tribunal President Antonio Cassese told The Daily Star in an exclusive interview on Saturday.

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The UN Security Council established the court to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, although the tribunal has a mandate to pursue the perpetrators behind assassinations, attempted killings and political violence from October 2004 through January 2007. Hariri’s killing sparked a wave of popular demonstrations which brought about the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence. Syria has always denied any involvement in Hariri’s assassination.

At the same time, Cassese believes the tribunal will struggle to find enough donations for its budget next year, because the added costs of a trial would run into state budgets shrunken by the economic crisis afflicting the Western nations bankrolling the court. Lebanon pays 49 percent of the tribunal’s annual budget, which for 2010 amounts to $55.35 million.

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Experts on international law have said it remains unclear how far the tribunal could go in any case to pursue high-ranking politicians, because the court’s statutes do not address whether heads of state enjoy immunity from the court. While Cassese said he could not comment on his court’s jurisdiction, he added that he had previously published his opinion that international tribunals did not have to respect diplomatic immunity because of the serious nature of the crimes they deal with.

“As an academic studying international law, I am on record … I have always argued that, as the International Court of Justice rightly pointed out, heads of state do not have functional immunity – that means that immunity because of the exercise of their functions while they were incumbent,” Cassese said.

“They enjoy personal immunities, however, before national courts. Before international tribunals they don’t enjoy any immunity whatsoever.”

The tribunal has also battled negative perceptions over the exodus of key personnel. Since being officially established in a suburb of Holland’s The Hague in March last year, the tribunal has witnessed the exits of the chief of investigations and two registrars – the officials who act as the court’s chief executive. Cassese said that all international courts experienced high rates of staff turnover, but the departures were usually connected to outside issues such as family or more lucrative job opportunities.

“I know that when [registrar Robin Vincent] left and then when [Vincent’s successor] David Tolbert left, people said, ‘So there is something wrong with this tribunal,’” Cassese said. “This happens all the time because these are international institutions where people are, in a way, taken away from their own countries. You don’t have friends. You don’t make friends in The Hague. I only go out to dinner with ambassadors or judges. So you get fed up.”

Cassese resigned from his post as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because his wife threatened him with divorce, even though he relished the work, he said. “I myself left after seven years because my wife said, look, either you come back or I will divorce you,” he said. “I had no choice. I was very happy to work there. I enjoyed my job very much, but then I had a family problem.”