Report: End of 2012-March is Timeframe for STL Trials

The trial of four Hizbullah members indicted in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination will be held late 2012 or early next year, Special Tribunal for Lebanon sources told the Kuwaiti daily al-Rai on Monday.

“The trial of the accused in former PM Rafik Hariri’s murder whether in their presence or in absentia will start between the end of this year and March of next year,” the sources said.

STL spokesperson Marten Youssef has already said that the court hopes the trial will start in 2012.

The STL also announced that it would put Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badreddine, Hussein Oneissi, and Assad Sabra on trial in their absence over Hariri’s murder after Lebanese authorities failed to arrest them.

Ayyash and Badreddine face five charges including that of "committing a terrorist act by means of an explosive device" and homicide, while Oneissi and Sabra faced charges of conspiring to commit the same acts.

It is up to the tribunal’s judges to decide the date of the trials but they are determined to speed up the process, the sources said.