UN tribunal sets up Hariri website for tip-offs

June 26, 2009
Agence-France Press
Original Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hMKk9rDlsUqgmYrVyhmghi9fVHwg http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hMKk9rDlsUqgmYrVyhmghi9fVHwg
THE HAGUE (AFP) — A UN court investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, on Thursday launched a secure website for people to supply information on the case.
The page was specifically for people who have valuable information for the investigation but have no secure and confidential means to pass it on, said a statement from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's prosecutors office.
It is a fairly common practice at the level of international justice, particularly with the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the prosecutor's spokesman Radhia Achouri told AFP.
The Internet page, available in English, French and Arabic -- the tribunal's three official languages -- has nothing to do with the investigation, which is making progress, said Achouri.
We want to give everyone who would like to supply information a chance to do so, she added.
It is for us to check if this information is worth following up or not. If we can find some useful information in everything that gets sent, so much the better.
The English version is at https://www.stl-tsl.org/action/submissionform https://www.stl-tsl.org/action/submissionform.
Hariri's murder in a bomb blast on the Beirut seafront that killed 22 other people in February 2005 was widely blamed on Syria but Damascus has denied involvement.
The UN Security Council created the tribunal in 2007 -- at the request of Lebanon -- to find and prosecute those responsible for the attack.
The tribunal has no suspects in custody since ordering the release in April of four pro-Syrian generals held by Lebanon for nearly four years without charge.