LEIDSCHENDAM, The Netherlands – A UN-backed tribunal on Tuesday convicted one member of the Hezbollah military group and released three others from involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon said Salim Ayyash was guilty as a conspiracy of five prosecutors linked to his involvement in the suicide bombing. Hariri and 21 others were killed and 226 injured in a massive explosion outside a seaside hotel in Beirut on February 14, 2005.
In this file from February 14, 2005, cars destroyed the site of a massive bombing raid by the motorcade of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon. (AP Photo)
However, after years of investigation and trial, three other Hezbollah members were released from all charges that they were also involved in the assassination of Hariri, who sent shock waves through the Mideast.
None of the suspects were ever arrested and were not in court to hear the verdicts.
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The tribunal’s judges also said there was no evidence that the leadership of the military group Hezbollah and Syria were involved in the attack, despite saying that the killing happened when Harairi and his political allies discussed a ” immediate and total withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, ”President Judge David Re said.
When the court launched in the wake of the attack, the tribunal raised hopes that for the first time in multiple instances of political violence in Lebanon the truth of what had happened would appear and those responsible would be held accountable.
But for many in Lebanon, the tribunal failed on both counts. Many of the suspects, including the man convicted Tuesday, are dead or out of range of justice. And the prosecution could not present a coherent picture of the bombing or who ordered it.
Judge President, Judge David Re, center back, with Judge Janet Nosworthy, left, and Judge Micheline Braidy, during a session of the UN Support Lebanon Tribunal in Leidschendam, Netherlands on Tuesday 18 August 2020, where it is scheduled to deliver down the verdict in the case against four men who were tried for the bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 other people. The UN-backed court in the Netherlands is preparing convictions in the trial held in the absence of four members of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group accused of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. (Piroschka Van De Wouw / Pool via AP)
The remarks come at a very sensitive time for Lebanon, following the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut two weeks ago, and like many in Lebanon, require an international investigation into that explosion.
But it was doubtful that the verdict, next 15 years after the murder and with no suspicions in court, would bring closure to those awaiting justice.
Hariri’s son, Saad, himself a former Lebanese prime minister, said outside court that the family accepted the statements. “The court has ruled,” he said. Now, he said, the family is awaiting the implementation of justice.
“The time when political crimes in Lebanon once went unpunished is gone,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.
A hearing will be held at a later date to determine the meaning of Ayyash. Because the court with UN support does not have the death penalty, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment.
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However, supporters of Hariri in the Beirut district of Tareeq al-Jadideh expressed anger and disappointment over the statements.
“If a police station in Tareeq al-Jadideh had investigated this crime, it would have been a better result,” one man, riding on a scooter, told a local television station.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri addresses the media after the UN-backed Lebanon Tribunal in Leidschendam, the Netherlands on Tuesday, August 18, 2020 handed down the verdict in the case against four men who were tried for the bombing that his father former Lebanese prime minister assassinated Rafik Hariri and 21 others. (AP photo / Laurens van Putten)
Re outlined the complex political background to the assassination and said Re that in the months before his death Hariri was a supporter of diminishing the influence of Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He said judges examining evidence in the trial of four Hezbollah members accused of involvement in the bombings “were of the opinion that Syria and Hezbollah may have motives to eliminate Mr Hariri, and some of his political allies. . “
But he added that there was no evidence that the “Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in the assassination of Mr. Hariri, and that there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement in it.”
The court was not expected to rule on Hezbollah or on Syria – but on Hezbollah’s four alleged suspects – because the tribunal can only prosecute individuals, not groups or states. But the fact that the tribunal appeared to explicitly and categorically exclude evidence linking Hezbollah’s leadership to the crime was good news for the Iranian support group, which dominates Lebanese politics and is under increased control and pressure at home. has come.
The statements were delayed by almost two weeks as a mark of respect for victims of another devastating explosion – the detonation of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the port of Beirut. The 180 people killed on August 4, wounding more than 6,000, leaving a quarter of a million with homes unfit to live in, plummeting a nation that was already plunged by economic and social malaise even deeper into the crisis.
The scale of the investigation and trial was evident from the size of the written judgment. Re said it ran to more than 2,600 pages with some 13,000 footnotes.
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The guilty verdict could link tensions in the small country. Hariri was the most prominent Sunni politician in Lebanon at the time of his assassination, while Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim group supported and funded by Tehran.
The trial focused on the alleged roles of four Hezbollah members in the suicide bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others and injured 226 people. Prosecutors based their case largely on mobile phone data, all used by the plotters to plan and carry out the bombings.
Re said the telecom evidence in the case was “almost entirely circumstantial.” Another judge, Janet Nosworthy, however, later said that judges had ruled that four different mobile phone networks “were interconnected and coordinated with each other, and functioned as secret networks at the relevant times.”
It was the lack of clear evidence from telephone registries that linked them to the bombing and efforts to establish a false claim of responsibility that led to the acquittal of three suspects – Assad Sabra, Hassan Oneissi, who gave his name changed into Hassan Issa and Hassan Habib Merhi. The judges ordered the arrest possessions for the three men withdrawn.
FIL – In this file of February 14, 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, center, talks to people outside the Lebanese parliament minutes before an explosion killed him and 22 others in Beirut, Lebanon. More than 15 years after the Hariri truck bombing in Beirut, a UN-backed tribunal in the Netherlands this week pronounced statements in the trial of four members of the militant group Hezbollah who were allegedly involved in the killing. (AP photo, file)
During the trial, which began in 2014 and consisted of 415 days of hearings, the tribunal in Leidschendam, near The Hague, heard evidence from 297 witnesses.
Initially, five suspects were tried, all Hezbollah members. Charges against one of the group’s top military commanders, Mustafa Badreddine, were dropped after he was assassinated in Syria in 2016. The court said Tuesday it could not prove Badreddine was the mastermind behind the murder.
Ayyash will probably not serve any time because Hezbollah promised not to surrender any suspicions. Lawyers and defense attorneys can appeal the rulings.
The assassination was seen by many in Lebanon as the work of Syria, a charge which Damascus denies and which the judges now say was not carried out by evidence in the trial.
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Saad Hariri sounded satisfied after attending the day-long delivery of the verdict as one of four victims present in the courtroom for the hearing.
“Because of the International Tribunal and for the first time in the history of the murder … we knew the truth,” he said.
“Everyone’s expectations were much higher than what came out, but I believe the tribunal came out with a result that is satisfactory,” Hariri said in English. He added that this is evidence that the tribunal has not been politicized.
Hariri added that now is the time for Hezbollah to make sacrifices, as those who carried out the assassination are members of the group.
