On August 29, 2016, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (Tribunal) sentenced a corporate media enterprise and one of its employees for contemptuously interfering with the Tribunal's proceedings in Ayyash, a prosecution concerning the February 2005 terrorist attack that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The contempt decision is significant for two reasons: (1) it adopts an expansive definition of the crime of contempt to restrict a journalist's freedom of expression; and (2) it is the first international judicial decision to hold a corporate entity criminally responsible.
