Sunday, July 10, 2011

Interpol forwards warrants for Hariri murder suspects

"I can confirm that the tribunal has requested Interpol to notify all states of the arrest warrants against the accused in the 15th February 2005 attack," the court's Beirut spokesman, Martin Youssef, told AFP.
He said that the international police organisation had issued a so-called "red notice" to member states late on Friday but gave no information on the presumed whereabouts or the identity of the four suspects.
"The international arrest warrants will not be published and will not be available to the public because they are still confidential," he added.
A senior officer in Lebanon's security services told AFP that Lebanon and the other 187 Interpol member states had received the "red notice" on Saturday asking them to arrest the suspects and hand them over to the UN-backed court for trial.
The official said the warrants were for four senior Hezbollah officers who are accused of carrying out a "terrorist act" and of "killing Rafiq Hariri and 21 others using explosives."
The Special Tribunal submitted a confidential indictment and arrest warrants for the four accused on June 30. The names of the four were not released but were leaked to the Beirut media and later confirmed by the Lebanese government.
Mustafa Badreddin, Salim Ayyash, Assad Sabra and Hussein Anaissi are all members of Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and now leads the majority bloc in the Lebanese parliament.
In a July 2 speech, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah ruled out the arrest of four.
"No Lebanese government will be able to carry out any arrests whether in 30 days... 30 years or even 300 years," he said.

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