The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which started its sessions last month, is expected to announce today a three-month recess, sources in the tribunal told Al-Akhbar.
On Tuesday, the STL Trial Chamber took the decision to join the case of suspect Hassan Merhi to the cases of the other 4 suspects (Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badreddine, Hussein Oneissi, and Assad Sabra), accused of participating in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
Merhi is considered to be the fifth suspect, so logic would dictate that all five men would face the same charges.
As a result, the court met and decided to join all cases together, although all parties involved, including the judges and prosecutors, already knew they were dealing with the same case. Such a process took weeks, and after a decision was finally reached, the court will now have to go into recess for several months in order to allow the defense team of the new suspect to examine the file of investigations, which in this case consists of over 750,000 pages and scores of electronic files.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/hariri-tribunal-announce-long-recess