Magistrate Jamal Hajjar was appointed acting public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation on Feb. 19, 2024.
The new acting public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation Jamal Hajjar issued three circulars on Tuesday. Some judges and lawyers said they illustrate his desire to organize the work of the country’s various public prosecutions.
However, the circulars ignited criticism from both the Mount Lebanon prosecutor at the Court of Appeal, Judge Ghada Aoun, who is subordinate to Hajjar, and more selectively from Legal Agenda Executive Director Nizar Saghieh.
The first circular requires the public prosecution offices at the Court of Appeal in all governorates, as well as the financial and military prosecution offices, not to issue open-ended search warrants. It is based on Article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which states that the warrant a public prosecutor issues expires after 10 days, unless the prosecutor extends it for up to 30 days, following which it shall expire.
Hajjar issued a second circular in the same vein, in which he asked the Directorate General of the Internal Security Forces (ISF) to inform him “personally” of any instruction made by a prosecutor regarding an extension of this legal time limit.
A judge close to the public prosecution at the Court of Cassation told L’Orient-Le Jour that Judge Hajjar would order to annul the search warrant if necessary. The judge condemned the fact that many search warrants are issued with “an open-ended deadline” although some of the offenses involved are “very minor.” Individual freedom is “sacred,” he said.
Ghada Aoun is ‘not targeted’
However, Aoun said “Annulling an arrest warrant is likely to encourage non-appearance and criminality ... It is only normal to issue a search warrant, which cannot be suspended when an implicated person failed to appear several times,” she wrote on X. “Article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure states that the public prosecution at the Court of Appeal has the power to issue search warrants without having to go through the public prosecution at the Court of Cassation,” she added.
In Aoun’s circles, it was said that the timing of the circulars coincided with the search warrant the judge issued against the CEO of Byblos Bank, Semaan Bassil.
However, the above-mentioned source said that Aoun “is not targeted” by Hajjar’s circular, deploring the fact that the media relayed “false information” on the so-called annulment by Hajjar of the search warrant against Bassil. Many other judges issue search warrants that have no expiry date, the same source said, stressing that “the enforcement of the law is above all considerations,” in Hajjar’s eyes.
Commenting on Hajjar’s decision, Saghieh said it is “in line with the law.” “The 30-day time limit was passed by the legislators so that public prosecutors would not abuse the law by keeping files in their hands indefinitely,” he said. “The case is different when it comes to the arrest warrants that the investigative judges issue. There is no time limit on these warrants because they are issued after a thorough investigation,” he said.
‘In the hands of a single person’
In his third circular, Hajjar instructed the prosecutors in the Court of Appeal, and financial and military prosecutors to “send the prosecution at the Court of Cassation the circulars they intend to send to the judicial police and advocate generals.” The circular added that “these circulars will then be forwarded to the parties concerned” through him.
The top prosecutor based his decision on Article 38 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, under which the judicial police’s tasks are performed by advocate generals and public prosecutors “under the authority of the public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation.” He also based his decision on his “commitment to cooperate” and “keenness to prevent any contradiction between the circulars issued by the various public prosecution’s offices.”
The above-mentioned source explained this process by the fact that “the prosecutors at the Court of Appeal often issue conflicting instructions for the same judicial situation.” However, he believes that requiring them to go through the top prosecutor will help them be in line with each other.
Aoun said that “a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal is not an employee of the prosecutor at the Court of Cassation.” “Even if the latter is competent to supervise the courts of appeal, the law stipulates that his instructions must be given to consolidate legal proceedings and the course of justice, rather than hindering them,” she said.
On this point, Saghieh disagreed with Hajjar. In his view, the law does not stipulate that the circulars need to go through the prosecution; adding this goes beyond his prerogatives.
According to Saghieh, this measure could weaken the prosecutors’ territorial authority and focus the criminal justice system in the hands of a single person. This would have “dangerous” repercussions especially if a judge “loyal to the political class” was appointed top prosecutor. “A suspect close to [a top prosecutor] would then be protected from any risk of prosecution,” he said.
Prior control is tantamount to “censorship,” said Saghieh, advocating “a posteriori control.” “It would have been more appropriate to ask the public prosecutors of the various governorates to send copies of their circulars to the top prosecutor to inform him,” he said, adding that “only those that do not have negative consequences or are contrary to the law should be annulled.”
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translated by Joelle El Khoury.
The new acting public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar, held talks with the investigating judge at the Court of Justice, Tarek Bitar, at his office on Thursday. According to a source close to the judges, the meeting was "positive" and focused on "general points" concerning the case of the double explosion at the port of Beirut on Aug. 4, 2020.
The meeting reflected a desire to get the case "back on track," even if it faces "obstacles," said the same source, recalling that relations between the Public Prosecutor's Office and Judge Bitar were not "at their best" under Ghassan Oueidat, who had notably forbidden the security services from carrying out the magistrate's decisions.
In his capacity as head of the Judicial Police, Hajjar also sent a memo to the head of State Security, Tony Saliba, instructing him to transfer detainees from centers run by this security service to prisons run by the ISF. "The document sent to Saliba reads, 'We instruct you to coordinate with the General Directorate of the ISF to transfer the detainees on the attached list [which L'Orient-Le Jour was unable to consult] as quickly as possible while asking you to inform us of the results.'"
The AlJadeed TV channel recently denounced the fact that some people were being held with State Security when they should be in ordinary prisons.