STL Trial Chamber to Hold a Third Pre-Trial Conference

The Trial Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will hold a third Pre-Trial Conference on Thursday 9 January in preparation for the start of the trial in the Ayyash et al. Case, announced the STL in a statement on Monday.

The Pre-Trial Conference, which will be public, will begin at 10:30 AM (Central European Time).

The Trial Chamber may decide to go into closed session if confidential matters need to be discussed.

The start of trial in the Ayyash et al. case is scheduled for January 16, 2014.

The STL was set up to tackle the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

In 2011, it indicted four Hizbullah members,Mustafa Amin Badreddine, Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi, and Assad Hassan Sabra, were indicted in the attack.

A fifth Hizbullah suspect, Hassan Habib Merhi, was indicted in 2013.

Earlier in December, STL spokesman Marten Youssef said that joining the cases of Ayyash et al. and Merhi is up to the international judges.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has rejected the STL, describing it as an American-Israeli product bent on destroying the party.

He has vowed never to cooperate with the tribunal, saying that the suspects, who remain at large, will never be found.