Special Tribunal for Lebanon

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), also referred to as the Lebanon Tribunal or the Hariri Tribunal, was a tribunal of international character that was active between 2009 and 2023. It applied Lebanese criminal law under the authority of the United Nations to carry out the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for 14 February 2005 assassination of Rafic Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, and the deaths of 21 others, as well as those responsible for connected attacks.

The Tribunal officially opened on 1 March 2009 and had primacy over the national courts of Lebanon. The Tribunal sat in Leidschendam, on the outskirts of The Hague, Netherlands, and had a field office in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Its official languages were Arabic, French and English. The Tribunal was unique among international criminal tribunals in that it had the right to hold trials in absentia, and it was the first to deal with terrorism as a distinct crime. (All of the defendants who were indicted by the tribunal were prosecuted in absentia.) The Tribunal's eleven judges, a combination of Lebanese and international judges, were appointed by the UN Secretary-General for a renewable term of three years.

The Tribunal's mandate was initially three years. However, there was no fixed timeline for the judicial work to be completed. The mandate was subsequently extended through to 2023 to allow the Tribunal to complete its work before it was ultimately shut down.

The verdict was eventually issued on 18 August 2020, which was originally set on 7 August, but postponed following the 2020 Beirut explosion. The verdict found Salim Ayyash, member of Hezbollah's Unit 121, guilty in absentia of five counts, including conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and the intentional homicide of Hariri and others. The conviction was primarily based on circumstantial evidence, notably mobile phone records that linked Ayyash to the surveillance and coordination of the attack.

In July 2021, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon announced that it faced financial difficulties due to a lack of funding, primarily driven by Lebanon's deepening economic crisis. Ultimately, on 31 December 2023, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric announced the STL's closure.