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Confront the Arab World's Gangsters

[Globe and Mail-Canada] Rami Khouri - With the international tribunal mandated by the UN Security Council to try those who will be accused of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the international community is confronting head-on the tradition of modern Arab political violence and intimidation. It seeks to end the impunity that criminal assassins have enjoyed in the modern Arab world, especially when those killers are part of, or hired by, ruling regimes and security agencies. The Hariri murder tribunal is the first serious attempt to counter the rule of the gangsters in the Arab world with the rule of law; to replace criminal impunity with judicial accountability. The process must be completed, or the Arab world will face many more decades of death on the world's last lawless frontier. The writer is director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
2007-02-16 01:00:00
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