Slipping the Nosse

By Benny Avni
December 22, 2008
The New York Post
Original Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/12222008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/slipping_the_noose_145354.htm
A SPECIAL court of vital importance for the future of Lebanon and Syria - and perhaps for the whole Middle East - is set to begin work in March, as the UN Security Council determined last week. 
If the court tries and punishes the assassins responsible for killing the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and specifically their Damascus-based masterminds, the whole region can become more respectful of the rule of law and assume a less cynical attitude toward democracy and good government. 
It's a big if, however. Powerful forces have a vested interest in assuring judicial impunity for the culprits in Hariri's killing. And management of the trial is in the hands of the United Nations – so don't bet on justice winning out. 
Hariri's murder (his motorcade was attacked with 2,500 lbs. of explosives on Valentine's Day 2005) sparked the Cedar Revolution that led to the Syrian army's withdrawal from Lebanon after decades but left the nation's politics paralyzed ever since, split between pro-Western and pro-Syrian/Iranian camps. The trial could tip the balance - and potentially even undermine the Syrian regime. 
The UN named an investigation team soon after the killing. Its first head investigator, tough German cop Detlev Mehlis, shocked the region by conducting the closest thing to a perp walk ever attempted by a UN official. 
Mehlis wrote a report that implicated the innermost circles around Syrian President Bashar Assad in Hariri's assassination. In the report it released to the Security Council, the UN Secretariat redacted names like Assad's brother Maher and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat. But the full text was leaked to the public, and to this day it remains the most solid indictment of the Assad clan. 
From then on, Mehlis' successors submitted bland reports focused on such inane details as how many new fax machines were bought by the investigators' Beirut office. They kept secret any new facts they'd uncovered - in order, they said, to assure the integrity of the judicial process. 
So will it be a credible judicial process? 
For months now, the UN has diligently set up an elaborate judicial structure in The Hague, where the Hariri case will be opened March 1. With pretrial, trial and appellate judges from international circles and the Lebanese judicial system, all trial chambers are ready to go. 
But such international judicial bodies lack key tools, like enforceable subpoena powers - so the court has no power to compel the top-tier suspects (or witnesses) to appear before it. 
That toothlessness inevitably drags out these courts' proceedings. Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic spent five years in the custody of a similar tribunal, dying in 2006 before it could pronounce a verdict. 
Lebanon's elections this spring may leave the pro-Iranian camp on top - making the new government unenthusiastic about cooperation with the Western-style court. Assad, meanwhile, clearly sees the trial as a serious threat to his power and life. He's unlikely to extradite top allies or close family members if they are indicted in Hague as the Mehlis report had indicated. His simplest solution may be to arrange a few fatal accidents. 
Since Mehlis' days, UN investigators have declined to name suspects. Indictments will be handed out only to members of the special tribunal, and will likely remain secret until open hearings begin. And the investigation's current head, Daniel Bellemare of Canada, seems to be promising not to indict only a few low-level goat, saying, There will be no indictment of convenience. 
The Assads have a habit of making themselves seem indispensible for any regional peace. If European governments (or, conceivably, the Obama administration) again see a need to protect the Syrian regime in the name of Mideast peace talks, they could starve the tribunal of financing, leaving it utterly impotent. 
The West, in other words, may deem the collapse of the Damascus regime inconvenient - and so let it get away with murder.