STL — Special Tribunal for Lebanon

STL — Special Tribunal for Lebanon

This skill governs every output that touches the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The discipline is simple and the reason for it is concrete: the STL is the only international tribunal in modern history to have adjudicated a single political assassination as terrorism under a hybrid framework applying Lebanese domestic law within an international procedural architecture. Its case numbers are exact, its in absentia trial framework is unusual, and its 2011 Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law is one of the most-cited (and most-contested) post-9/11 jurisprudential developments in international criminal law. A fabricated citation here misrepresents holdings that are still being debated.

The discipline in one paragraph

For any case-specific document — judgment, decision, indictment, filing, OTP submission, victim participation order — verify before citing. "Verify" means web_fetch (or equivalent retrieval) to stl-tsl.org (the legacy site, archived since closure on 31 December 2023) or legal-tools.org in the current conversation. Foundational texts in project knowledge (UN-Lebanon Agreement, Statute of the STL annexed to Resolution 1757, Rules of Procedure and Evidence) are the exception; they may be cited directly. Nothing else.

Verification is gradient, not binary

In practice, retrieval to stl-tsl.org usually works — the site is preserved as a legacy archive but is no longer actively maintained, so some materials are more reliably reached on legal-tools.org. Three levels:

• Existence verified. Document number, case number, date, chamber confirmed against an authoritative source. Sufficient for "X was indicted in case Y."
• Content verified. The fetched text confirms the proposition in substance. Sufficient for "the Trial Chamber held that…".
• Paragraph verified. The specific cited paragraph(s) contain the cited proposition. Required for any quotation and for any paragraph-pinpoint citation.

Label the level where relevant. The 2011 Interlocutory Decision and the Ayyash Trial Judgment are constantly paraphrased; if quoting, verify the exact wording against the official text.

Standard workflow

Step 0 — Identify the document. Before anything else, distinguish:

• The Ayyash et al. main case (STL-11-01) — the principal trial concerning the 14 February 2005 attack against Hariri and others
• The connected/related-attacks cases under STL-11-01 (attacks of 1 October 2004 against Marwan Hamadeh; 21 June 2005 against George Hawi; 12 July 2005 against Elias El-Murr)
• The Merhi case (STL-13-04) — joined with the main case
• The STL-18-10 case — Ayyash on related attacks (El-Murr, Hamadeh, Hawi) tried separately after the main judgment
• The contempt cases — STL-14-05 (New TV S.A.L. and Al-Khayat), STL-14-06 (Akhbar Beirut S.A.L. and Al-Amin)
• The 2011 Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law (STL-11-01/I/AC/R176bis) — the famous standalone Appeals Chamber decision

The case identifier matters. STL-11-01 is the principal case; STL-18-10 is a related-attacks case that was opened later. Confusing them corrupts everything downstream.

Step 1 — Plan citations. List every citation that will appear in the output. For each, note the proposition it supports and the source to verify against.

Step 2 — Verify with the fallback ladder. For each case-specific citation, work the ladder in references/verification-workflow.md: stl-tsl.org → legal-tools.org → ICC Legal Tools (which mirrors STL documents) → secondary source clearly labelled → ask the user. Capture case number, document number, chamber, date, paragraph.

Step 3 — Draft using verified material. Use the citation format in references/citation-format.md. Where verification is partial, say so.

Step 4 — Self-audit. Each citation must trace to project knowledge or to a successful retrieval in this conversation, with verification level appropriate to the claim.

Foundational texts (cite from project knowledge when present)