Trial of Karma al-Khayat, Lebanese Journalist, Begins in Hague Tribunal
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — A Lebanese journalist went on trial Thursday before an international tribunal to face charges of obstruction of justice and contempt of court for publishing confidential information from the international investigation into the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister. The journalist, Karma al-Khayat, the deputy director of Al Jadeed TV in Beirut, appeared with a team of lawyers and pleaded not guilty at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on the outskirts of The Hague. She could face a heavy fine or seven years in prison if found guilty; the television station could be fined as well. She is the first defendant to stand trial in person since the court’s opening in 2009. Another case involves five Lebanese men who are being tried in absentia. Ms. Khayat, 32, said the charges amounted to an attack on media freedoms and that she had found support among other journalists at home and abroad. Critics of the tribunal, which is backed by the United Nations and financed by Lebanon and Western donors, have called the case an unnecessary digression from its mandate, which is to clarify the question of who orchestrated the car bombing that killed Mr. Hariri and 21 others in central Beirut. Yet judges at the Lebanon tribunal have ruled that disclosures by Al Jadeed and other news organizations undermined the court’s work and scared off witnesses. The tribunal named a special judge and a prosecutor to investigate the journalists. ”If witnesses are too frightened to come to this tribunal, then this tribunal is finished,” the prosecutor, Kenneth Scott, told the court. The newspaper Al Akhbar, which is close to the militant movement Hezbollah, and its editor, Ibrahim al-Amin, are also facing contempt of court charges. Al Akhbar, which has long called the tribunal illegitimate, published photographs, birth dates, professions and other personal details of about 30 people in 2013 and labeled them confidential witnesses in a banner headline. The Al Akhbar trial is expected to start later this year. At issue on Thursday was a series of Al Jadeed broadcasts from 2012, overseen by Ms. Khayat as the news editor, in which reporters interviewed possible witnesses, asking them if they had been contacted by investigators and what information was being sought. The broadcasts blurred the faces of the interview subjects and withheld their names, but the prosecutor said that people could be identified by their voices and other details. Ms. Khayat has said that she had received a list of names from an anonymous source and that the tribunal was clearly “leaking information.” It was her right and duty to highlight those leaks and “we pointed that out in the story,” she said. The television station ignored several court orders to remove the broadcasts from its website and from other news platforms, and the prosecution said the programs were part of a campaign to undermine the tribunal’s work. ”What this case is really about is a media company and its management that wanted a big scoop, a high-profile, so-called exclusive,” said Mr. Scott, who was appointed last year. The trial is expected to continue until early May. The tribunal has also been hearing testimony from witnesses about the Hariri assassination. But the five Lebanese men accused of complicity in planning the assassination are not in the dock. All are said to be close to Hezbollah, and that organization’s leaders have said they did not recognize the tribunal and would never hand over anyone to it. |