Beirut: The international tribunal dealing with the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon has charged two leading Lebanese journalists with contempt of court and obstruction of justice over the publication of confidential information about possible witnesses for the prosecution.

The two journalists — Ebrahim Al Amin, the editor of Al Akhbar, and Karma Al Khayat, the deputy head of news of Al Jadeed TV — have been summoned to appear before the court May 13, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon said in a statement issued Thursday.

The two parent companies, Akhbar Beirut and New TV, are also criminally accountable, the court said.

It was not immediately known how the two news organisations planned to react. The journalists or representatives of the companies may choose whether to appear in person at the tribunal, based in the Netherlands, or attend the first hearing via video link. But if they ignore the summons, arrest warrants may follow, a lawyer familiar with the case said.

The penalty for contempt of court is a prison term of as long as seven years or a fine of as much as €100,000 (Dh508,000).

The newspaper Al Akhbar, which is close to the militant group Hezbollah, has been the most vociferous critic of the tribunal, which was set up in 2007 at the request of the Lebanese government, with backing from the United Nations.

The tribunal has charged five Hezbollah members in the car bombing that killed Hariri, based on an elaborate reconstruction of telephone records. But the five men’s whereabouts are unknown, and their trial opened this year in their absence.

Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the bombing and denounced the tribunal as a tool of the US and Israel.

The summons against Khayat and her employer relate to August 2012, when the television station broadcast information about several people it purported were prosecution witnesses.

Khayat and the station then ignored a judge’s orders to remove the information from the company’s website and a YouTube page, the indictment said.

Al Akhbar followed with more blatant steps in January 2013 when, in two successive issues, it displayed photographs, dates of birth, professions and other personal details of 32 people from supposedly confidential court witness lists. The paper halted its revelations after Lebanon’s attorney general warned that it was violating a judge’s orders of confidentiality. The tribunal is largely based on Lebanese law.

Last year after a third incident, when hackers broke into a Lebanese news website and plastered the front page with personal data of 167 Lebanese men, saying they were secret witnesses, the tribunal appointed a special prosecutor to investigate what it called a continuing campaign to intimidate witnesses and derail the trial.

The news outlets said that they had obtained their “confidential” information through leaks from the court staff, suggesting that the tribunal was not serious. A court spokesman has said that is not believable.

The court has never confirmed whether the names cited were accurate, but in his decision to summon the editors, Judge David Baragwanath wrote that there was evidence of “wilful and knowing interference” with the administration of justice.

Publishing names “reduces the confidence of both actual witnesses and the public in the ability and the will of the tribunal to protect its witnesses.”

However vital freedom of expression and freedom of the press are, he wrote, “freedom of the press must find its limits.”

He added, “It does not allow for interference with the tribunal’s mandate.”

Like judges and the rest of the community, he said, “the media must comply with the law.”