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Netherlands: The Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Friday sentenced Salim Ayyash, suspected of belonging to Hezbollah and convicted of participating in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, to life in prison.
“The crimes are so serious that they require the greatest punishment,” said Judge David Rhee of the Netherlands-based court. He added that “offenses of a high degree of seriousness to the extent that the circumstances that can be considered mitigating and allow the reduction of the sentence, are rare.”
He emphasized that “the Trial Chamber considers that the maximum penalty for each of the five crimes, which is life imprisonment, must be imposed simultaneously.”
Ayyash, 57, was tried in absentia and convicted last August for his role in the suicide bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others.
Salim Ayyash remains at large, as Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah refused to hand him over, along with three other defendants, who were ultimately acquitted.
During a hearing in November, prosecutors said life imprisonment was the “only fair and appropriate sentence” for Salim Ayyash, considering that the matter was related to “the most serious terrorist attack on Lebanese soil.” They also demanded the confiscation of Ayyash’s property.
Rafik Hariri was Prime Minister of Lebanon before his resignation in October 2004. He was killed in February 2005 when a suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives as his armored convoy passed.
The attack left 22 dead and 226 wounded.
On August 18, at the conclusion of a six-year trial, the judges found that there was sufficient evidence to determine that Ayyash was at the center of a network of mobile phone users who had spied on Hariri in the months leading up to his murder.
They said in their verdict that Ayyash “is guilty in an uncontaminated manner by any reasonable suspicion” of the five charges brought against him, namely, “plotting a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and committing a terrorist act with the use of an explosive device and deliberately killing Hariri with the use of explosive materials and deliberately killing 21 other people using explosive materials and attempting to kill. ” 226 people deliberately using explosive materials ”.
On the other hand, the court acquitted the three remaining defendants, Asaad Sabra, Hussein Oneisi and Hassan Habib Merhi, who belonged to Hezbollah and were tried in absentia because the Lebanese authorities could not arrest them and hand them over to the court, and because the party Shiite refused to hand over any of its members to a court it considered politicized. Outside.
In its statement at the time, the court said: “The Trial Chamber will now impose a penalty in relation to each charge for which Ayyash was convicted, or will impose a single penalty that covers all of his criminal conduct. A convicted person can be sentenced to life imprisonment.
‘A giant without arms’
According to the judges, there is no evidence of a link between the attack and the leadership of Hezbollah or its allies in Damascus. Experts said that this decision is important even if it was issued in absentia.
“Trials in absentia are not the best way to achieve justice,” said Christophe Bolosan, a researcher at the Acer Institute in The Hague.
He said that international tribunals are like a “giant without arms or legs” because they depend on the states to arrest suspects and are not in a position to implement any decisions themselves.
He added: “But despite this obstacle, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has managed to at least form a convincing judicial record on what happened 15 years ago, which helped Lebanese society move from a culture of impunity to a culture of responsibility”.
In 2007, the UN Security Council approved the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in Leidschendamm, the Netherlands, and presented it as the world’s first international court to investigate terrorist crimes.
Salim Ayyash will be at the center of another trial in the same court, related to three other bloody attacks on Lebanese politicians in 2004 and 2005.
(AFP)
