Miqati Denies Receiving Official Decision on Bellemare’s Successor
The premier’s office didn’t receive yet any official information on the appointment of Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia Norman Farrell as Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor to replace judge Daniel Bellemare.
“Prime Minister (Najib Miqati) didn’t receive yet the STL’s decision,” the premier’s sources told An Nahar newspaper on Monday.
Bellemare will leave his post in March for health reasons; he refused to seek reappointment for a second term as prosecutor at the end of his tenure in February.
According to An Nahar, the STL’s spokesman Marten Youssef also said that he didn’t receive any information on the successor of Bellemare.
He noted that the appointment will be announced officially in New York.
The denial came after al-Arabiya reported that Farrell will most likely be Bellemare’s successor after U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon allegedly informed Premier Najib Miqati about his choice.
Farrell was the Principal Legal Officer in the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor, a post he held from 2005. Previously, he was the Senior Appeals Counsel and Head of the Appeals Section in the Office of the Prosecutor for both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the ICTY.
The STL was set up by the U.N. Security Council in 2007 and has announced that it will put four Hizbullah members on trial even though they have not yet been detained.
The four have been charged for the Feb. 14, 2005 car bombing in Beirut that killed ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.
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