Karma Khayat, vice president of Al-Jadeed television, has been judged by an worldwide court in The Hague to have exposed witnesses in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and defied a court order to remove the material from a website. The TV station was acquitted of corporate liability on both counts.
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Defenders of journalist Karma Khayat say the charges raise questions about free speech and have accused the tribunal of seeking to intimidate the free press in order to prevent it from holding public institutions to account.
The 2005 suicide bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others was one of the Middle East’s most dramatic political assassinations.
The prosecutor had later alleged “11 witnesses were approached”.
An global court was set up after Lebanese politicians said their judicial system could not cope with the investigation into his murder.
Five suspects, all linked to the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim militant movement Hezbollah, which is part of the current Beirut government, have since been indicted for the killing.
The witnesses’ faces were hidden and names were not mentioned, but “nobody was fooled” as to whom their identities may be, prosecutors told the judge during the trial.
“The verdict of innocence in the contempt charge means that you (the STL) wasted our time and disrupted our workflow for two years, and in the end, we were right”.
Khayat deferred to her lawyers on the future of the case, but was defiant in defense of the reporting which precipitated it. “(At) this stage it isn’t over yet”.
Supporters of Hezbollah accuse the tribunal of serving USA and Israeli interests.
“Al-Jadeed used professional standards”, Khayat said.
A judge the same month ordered Khayat and her station to take down the broadcasts. She could face a fine of 100,000 euros and seven years in prison – though this would be an unusually harsh punishment for an worldwide court.
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“But ultimately this is a case that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place”, he said.
