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On Friday, the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues its verdict against Salim Ayyash, suspected of belonging to Hezbollah and convicted of participating in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.
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 in prison was the “only fair and appropriate sentence” for Salim Ayyash.
They considered that the matter was related to “the most dangerous terrorist attack that occurred on Lebanese soil.” They also demanded the confiscation of Ayyash’s property.
Rafik Hariri was Prime Minister of Lebanon before resigning in October 2004. He was killed in February 2005 when a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of 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 had been at the center of a network of mobile phone users who had spied on Hariri in the months leading up to his murder.
And they said in their verdict that Ayyash is “guilty in a way that is not tainted 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 an explosive device and deliberately killing Hariri with the use of explosive materials and deliberately killing another 21 people with explosive materials and attempting to kill another 21 people. 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 they were tried in absentia because the Lebanese authorities were unable to 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 and “politicized.”
In its statement at the time, the court said: “The Trial Chamber will now impose one sentence in relation to each charge for which Ayyash was convicted, or will impose a single sentence covering all of his criminal conduct. A convicted person can be sentenced to life imprisonment. “
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