BEIRUT: Lebanese officials should be summoned to The Hague to testify in front of the United Nations-backed court investigating the 2005 assassination of Statesman Rafik Hariri, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) heard Friday.

Senior Trial Counsel Ian Morley, representing Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, told an STL Trial Chamber hearing that Lebanon should be doing more to locate and arrest the four Hezbollah members accused in June of the crime.

“It is not for the prosecution to speak for the Lebanese authorities on this issue. There are palpably further reasonable steps which could be taken,” Morley said.

Four Hezbollah members were named in arrest warrants issued in June but have so far proved elusive to security forces in Lebanon. Friday’s session, called for by a court judge, was to decide on the viability of in absentia trials against suspects.

Morley said that Lebanese authorities had already “moved toward an understanding that these individuals will not be located and not arrested and that there will be a trial in absentia.”

“We are still at the phase where we should be actively looking for the four accused,” he added.

State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza, in his progress report to The Hague earlier in the year, said that security forces had delivered arrest warrants to the last known addresses of Salim Jamil Ayyash, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra. Lebanon’s arrest efforts were deemed “not sufficient” in August by then-STL President, the late Antonio Cassese.

“The first thing you’d probably do if you are a wanted individual in an international tribunal is not go back to your last known address,” Morley told the Trial Chamber. “There is assumption that we’re going to do more than go to a suspect’s last known address and ask around.”

Last month Bellemare issued a confidential document to authorities in Beirut outlining additional steps that could be taken to expedite the arrest of one or all of the accused.

“It is quite possible that with additional measures we can arrest at least one [of the accused]. Given a bit more time, somebody is going to get arrested,” Morley said.

The court has split Lebanon’s political scene, with opponents calling for an outright boycott of what they see as a biased tribunal. Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen ordered Lebanese authorities in June to arrest the accused, but Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah vowed that his members would not be arrested, not “even in 300 years.”

Morley said circumstances in Lebanon should only be taken into account in the form of evidence.

“There is a suggestion that there are difficulties in Lebanon … which make affecting the location and arrest of defendants problematic. It may be that if you heard evidence from Lebanese authorities certain apparently straightforward investigative steps could not take place in Lebanon,” he said.

The STL is unique among international tribunals in that it has provisions within its statute to try suspects in absentia, but only if several guidelines are met and only as a last resort.

Given that both prosecuting and defense counsels have filed similar submissions to the court this week, it is likely that the Trial Chamber will decide that in absentia proceedings for the accused are currently premature.

The Defense Office told the hearing that it was against such trials now because the matter related to the rights of the accused.

“The right to attend one’s trial is guaranteed [under international law], Deputy Head of the Defense Office Aria Aoun said. “The danger [with in absentia trials] is impunity. Because guilt can only be established beyond reasonable doubt, we accept the idea that impunity might be possible in the absence of visible guilt.”

Aoun argued that the victims of the Feb. 14, 2005, attack would not be given the full truth if suspects did not attend their trials.

“An in absentia trial is offering a certain truth to the victims and to the public but maybe it can also be used to assert the authority of justice but more likely such a trial is also making certain facts part of history,” she said.