Tuesday, Sep 29, 2015
Los Angeles: It was a symbolic measure, a mere €10,000 (Dh41,236), but the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) issued its first sentence on Monday when Contempt Judge Nicola Lettieri fined the Al Jadeed TV deputy chief editor Karma Khayat for “interfering with the administration of justice” because the reporter failed to remove online content on alleged witnesses.
Lettieri found Khayat guilty on one count on September 18 but exonerated Al Jadeed for diffusing information that undermined public confidence in “the court’s ability to protect the confidentiality of information about, or provided by, witnesses or potential witnesses”. Khayat, on the other hand, disobeyed a court order to remove the information on the alleged witnesses from the TV’s website and YouTube channel and denied the charge.
The €10,000 fine is to be paid in full by October 30, 2015, and while the judge revealed that he would issue a written report on his reasons, the fact that the fine was small could lead to appeals by the prosecutor. News reports in The Hague and in Beirut expected to see multiple applications because of alleged obstruction of justice concerns, even if this was little more than a sideshow to the far more serious data collection case. Where Al Jadeed scored a coup, however, was in transforming its lawsuit into a media circus — on the grounds of freedom of speech — though the legal campaigns to prove slander on the court’s part were not at the heart of the matter. Critically, what mattered were the trials in absentia of five Hezbollah operatives accused of murdering former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The UN Security Council first set up the STL in 2007 after the Lebanese government requested the creation of an international court because Beirut determined that it could not rely on its own judiciary to rise above divisive local political conditions. It is trying an act of terror as defined by the Security Council since the February 14, 2005 assassinations — of Hariri as well as 22 others — in a massive suicide car bombing on the Beirut waterfront, fit the category.
Al Jadeed broadcast five programmes in August 2012 on the alleged witnesses due to testify at the highly-sensitive trial, including 11 who raised safety concerns after allegations were made about them on the airwaves. The TV station, and Khayat in person, slammed the STL as being little more than an American-Israeli scheme to spread havoc, and insisted that they concealed the witnesses’ faces and names though other hints rendered that point moot. In fact, it was relatively easy to identify them, which prosecutors summarised in these exceptional words: “Nobody was fooled”.
Khayat reacted as expected on September 18 when she declared that “the verdict of innocence in the contempt charge means that you (the STL) wasted our time and disrupted our workflow for two years, and in the end, we were right”. She added: “A single email cannot be considered enough evidence against me,” referring to an email from the STL that ordered the broadcasts to be removed, and which Khayat claimed she never opened. She hammered the court and accused it of convicting her “just to save face”, which reflected the polarisation that the STL created in Lebanon.
Khayat, who appeared at The Hague in person last April to defend herself, told the court that her television station aimed to ensure that money to fund the tribunal was not being squandered.
By Joseph A. Kechichian Senior Writer
Gulf News 2015. All rights reserved.
