Mr. Bellemare, kindly explain a puzzling point

In recent days Daniel Bellemare, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, has behaved out of character by speaking extensively to Lebanese and Arab media. This was made inevitable by the fact that opponents of the tribunal have been trying lately to put the institution on the defensive, while Bellemare himself needed to show new vitality after spending several weeks in Canada undergoing medical tests.

There was some optimism this week when the prosecutor reported he had made progress in the case. Bellemare told Future Television that, while he was not ready to indict, “what I have to satisfy myself is that the evidence that we have now is evidence that is admissible in court according to international standards that are contained now in the rules of procedure.”

It’s good to hear this, but it’s also a sign of the sluggish pace of the UN investigation that we should treat this as big news four years after Rafik Hariri’s assassination. The real question is when Bellemare will have enough evidence to accuse someone. On that front no one at the tribunal has been forthcoming, apparently because they don’t know.

In an interview with Al-Hayat published on Tuesday, Bellemare defended his work, saying it was not politicized. He insisted that he would resign if he ever felt that political pressure had been brought to bear on the tribunal. Bellemare denounced those who said that he was dying of cancer (the former Minister Wiam Wahhab made such a claim), insisting that he was in excellent health. And he remarked about the four generals, that they had never been put on trial to now be declared innocent, but that if there was evidence against them, “we will knock on their doors.”

Answering a question about the controversial testimonies of Muhammad Zuhair al-Siddiq and another Syrian witness, Hussam Hussam, and their impact on his inquiry, Bellemare said (in an English retranslation of his comments): “Let me say that before the decision was taken to liberate the four officers, our investigators met with Siddiq in the United Arab Emirates, and naturally any effort to mislead the work of the tribunal disturbs me, and wastes time and effort. In some cases this leads to consequences, and the reality is that these misleading statements forced us to review our approach to the investigation.”

Bellemare’s observations about Siddiq added more confusion to an already-perplexing aspect of the investigation. Earlier this summer, the prosecutor’s spokeswoman, Radhia Achouri, announced that Bellemare no longer considered Siddiq of interest to his investigation. When I asked Achouri about this in July, and whether Siddiq would be penalized in some way for giving false testimony, she said that he would not be, before pointing out that the tribunal had no jurisdiction to punish him.

This sounded very odd indeed. Witnesses in the Hariri case gave sworn testimony and were obliged to sign their statements. To lie under oath is a crime. Moreover, Siddiq was considered a suspect by the first UN commissioner, Detlev Mehlis. At the least, the prosecution should have established why he lied, whether this was intentional and if so, who put him up to it, and then explained clearly why he was no longer a suspect and why he had not paid a price for deceiving investigators.

In his response to Al-Hayat, Bellemare avoided these questions altogether. Instead, he treated Siddiq’s deceitfulness merely as an inconvenience that wasted time and effort. Of course it wasted time and effort, but what it also did was cast grave doubts on the credibility of the UN investigation. However, instead of explaining what went wrong, if something did indeed go wrong, Bellemare only exacerbated matters by failing to satisfactorily elucidate what really happened with Siddiq.

Nor did the prosecutor’s comments on the generals convince. In the view of many people, the four were arrested primarily on the basis of Siddiq’s testimony. Their release, therefore, seemed to indicate that what he told UN investigators was untrue. But that’s not the prosecution’s line. There appears still to be a belief within the prosecution that the generals, or some of them, may yet be indicted – certainly Bellemare’s statement to Al-Hayat implied this. The fact that the four were kept in prison for three years after Mehlis’ departure revealed that both his successor, Serge Brammertz, like Bellemare afterward, had reason to suspect that they were somehow involved in the crime itself or its aftermath.

Bellemare tried to hint in an interview with Al-Akhbar last February that he had his differences with the Lebanese judicial authorities over the continued detention of the generals, and that he had expressed these in private to Said Mirza. “The Lebanese judiciary is sovereign and I cannot, as commissioner, intervene with the Lebanese judiciary,” Bellemare told the newspaper, before noting: “However that does not mean that I don't express my opinion to the Lebanese public prosecutor.”

However, this was a significant misstatement of judicial procedure. The fact is that if at any stage of his investigation Bellemare (like Brammertz before him) had concluded that the provisional arrest of the generals was no longer warranted, he could have, and should have, stated this in writing under the letterhead of the UN commission. It made no legal sense for the commissioner to simply whisper his misgivings to Mirza. That neither Brammertz nor Bellemare ever did put his views in writing suggests that both approved of the generals’ detention. Indeed, Bellemare only released them when the tribunal offered him no choice but to indict now or free the four for their possible recall another day.

We can only wish Bellemare well as he continues on his journey toward an indictment, hoping that he will make landfall soon. However, the fate of Siddiq has not been properly explained, reflecting negatively on the prosecution’s integrity. Remaining tight-lipped can cut both ways.