THE HAGUE - The Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s defense attorney for Mustafa Badreddine—a Hezbollah member indicted for Rafiq Hariri’s 2005 assassination—played down the prosecution’s case against his client.
 
“So far when it comes to the accusations, there has been nothing new,” Antoine Korkmaz told NOW on Friday after the Tribunal’s Prosecution concluded its opening statements.
 
“[Their case is] mainly [based on] telecommunications data… they’re repeating what we already knew,” he added.
 
Korkmaz also said that the STL’s Office of the Prosecutor has yet to “show the content of [their] communications data.”
 
“They’re showing who is calling who, but we don’t know anything about the content,” the attorney added after the prosecution in their opening statements introduced a summary of the different sets of phone calls they allege proves the indicted men conspired to commit the February 14, 2005 assassination of Hairri.
 
Korkmaz refused to divulge the content of the defense team’s opening statements set for Monday morning, but hinted at one possible defense.
 
“If we assume that these people were monitoring [Hariri’s movement], this doesn’t necessarily mean that those who monitored are those who executed the crime,” Badreddine’s lawyer told NOW.
 
In an often technical presentation at the first day of trial before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the prosecution began on Thursday to detail how it believes Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra participated in the Hariri assassination.
 
The prosecution’s case rests largely on telecommunications data, and the bulk of the proceedings focused on mobile phones allegedly used by the accused and as yet unnamed others.
 
A fifth suspect, Hassan Merhi, was mentioned frequently during the proceedings although his case, at present, is a separate legal matter. The prosecution has requested to join the two cases.
 
A further hearing before the trial chamber is expected in the next few weeks, judges said during a Monday hearing on the matter.
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/stl-updates/530934-stl-defense-attorney-prosecutions-case-is-nothing-new