|
Netherlands to host Hariri tribunal
The Netherlands plans to host the international court that will try suspects in the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told Dutch public Radio 1 Thursday. Hariri and 22 other people were killed in a massive truck bombing in Beirut in February 2005. "We will react positively" to the request of UN chief Ban Ki-moon to have the tribunal in The Hague, Verhagen said. "I am working under the premise that the tribunal will be in The Hague. Obviously we have to sort out some practical matters first like financing and where possible convicts will go to serve their sentences," the minister explained. "I think it will work out," he added. The United Nations secretary general wrote to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende last month asking the Netherlands to host the Hariri tribunal. Balkenende will send Ban his positive response "very soon," Verhagen said. The tribunal will also have jurisdiction over this and other attacks against anti-Syrian Lebanese figures carried out between October 2004 and December 2005 if they are linked to the Hariri slaying. The Hague bills itself as the legal capital of the world ...
The Special Court for Sierra Leone, which has its headquarters in Freetown, has also moved the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor to The Hague.
Posted by: lotp 2007-08-17 |
||
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=196381 |