The Special Tribunal for Lebanon Swiftly Adopts Its Rules of Procedure and Evidence

Abstract

The Judges of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) recently adopted the Rules of Procedure and Evidence to guide the work of the court in bringing to justice those responsible for the attack of 14 February 2005 that resulted in the death of then-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri (‘the Hariri Attack’) as well as related attacks. These provisions draw heavily on analogous instruments of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. However, they also contain a number of innovations, including the enhanced role of the Pre-Trial Judge, the establishment of an independent and empowered Defence Office and the possibility of trials in absentia. The review carried out in this article is not a comprehensive analysis of every provision of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Instead, the purpose is to describe the key features of this instrument and, in doing so, to highlight points of interest, intersection and divergence in comparison with the analogous instruments of other International Criminal Tribunals. As such, the exegesis is intended to provide an overview of the procedural framework of the STL that will be of use to scholars and practitioners alike.