Report: Bellemare Requested Fingerprints of 4 Million Lebanese
The Beirut office of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s Prosecutor has reportedly asked the interior ministry to provide it with the fingerprints of 4 million Lebanese.
As Safir daily said Thursday that after reviewing laws, the ministry provided Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare with only several hundred fingerprints.
The report came a day after it was revealed that Caretaker Ministers Ghazi Aridi, Jebran Bassil, Ziad Baroud and Charbel Nahhas had turned down requests from Bellemare to provide information and documents, in breach of the cooperation protocol signed with the U.N.
Nahhas confirmed on Wednesday that he did not comply with Bellemare’s request for information “until the legal debate over the STL is settled at cabinet.”
As for Aridi, he told As Safir in remarks published Thursday that he “would speak at the appropriate time and unveil what Daniel Bellemare had requested from” the public works ministry.
Meanwhile, An Nahar daily quoted informed sources as saying that developments at the STL were making more progress than the cabinet formation process, hinting to the possibility that Premier-designate Najib Miqati would form the government after the release of the indictment.
Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen is tasked with confirming the charges in the indictment, widely believed to implicate Hizbullah members in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
The sources said that Bellemare transferred the indictment under seal to Fransen more than six weeks ago, hinting that it would be released in the coming weeks.
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