15 years after an assassination rocked Lebanon, UN-backed tribunal delivers verdict

feature-top

August 18: The case went to trial in a country far from the crime scene with none of the accused in custody. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars to prosecute and employed armies of investigators, researchers and lawyers.

But when the verdict on the most consequential political assassination in Lebanon’s recent history arrived on Tuesday, it left the country without a sense of closure and failed to answer even the most basic question: Who ordered the killing?

For a huge suicide car bomb attack in Beirut in 2005 that rattled the Middle East and killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others, a United Nations-backed tribunal in the Netherlands acquitted three defendants for lack of evidence, The New York Times reported.

The fourth man, Salim Ayyash, was convicted of participating in a conspiracy to carry out the bombing. But if he is ever apprehended, the court will have to try him all over again since he was tried in absentia.

The long-awaited verdict from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was created in 2009 at the behest of the United Nations Security Council, disappointed many Lebanese and others who had hoped that an international inquiry would reveal — and punish — those responsible for the crime and break the country’s long cycle of impunity for political killings.

Although the court said that Syria and Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group, had motives to “eliminate” Hariri, it said it lacked direct evidence implicating them in the crime.

“It’s like in 9/11 if you name the hijackers and not bin Laden,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a research center based in Paris. “This was way above Ayyash’s pay grade.”

It is unlikely that Ayyash will ever be found, he said, and in any case, he was “a cog in the system,” not the attack’s mastermind.

Hariri was a momentous figure in Lebanon’s politics, a charismatic billionaire businessman with extensive relationships in the United States, Europe and Saudi Arabia who used his wealth and connections to jump-start growth in Lebanon after its disastrous 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

But his killing in 2005 ushered in a new, turbulent era in Lebanese politics during which his Western- and Gulf-aligned political bloc competed for power with rivals backed by Syria and Iran, including Hezbollah, the powerful militant group and political party. A string of assassinations of other prominent figures followed, with none of their killers ever identified or punished.

Initially, many Lebanese hoped that the creation of the international tribunal would provide a way for justice to be done. But the investigation and hearings dragged on as the killing faded into the past.

In recent months, protests over corruption and poor governance have flared against the political elite, and the economy and currency have all but collapsed. The country is also reeling from a massive explosion in the Beirut port that killed more than 170 people and wounded 6,000.

Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said it felt as if the tribunal were “from a different era.”

The verdict came as Lebanon’s politicians are wrangling over the possibility of an international investigation into the Beirut blast; its limited convictions could undermine hopes that those responsible for the explosion will be held accountable.

“After 15 years and a Special Tribunal for Lebanon with international investigators and we end up with this?” Yahya asked. “How is anyone ever going to be held accountable for the port explosion?”

Saad Hariri, a son of the assassinated politician and himself a former prime minister of Lebanon, attended Tuesday’s session and told reporters after the verdict that he and his family accepted it.

Writing on Twitter, he called it a “historic moment” and “a message to whoever carried out and planned this terrorist crime that the era of using crime for politics without punishment and without a price has ended.”

The court announced the verdicts after hourslong statements from its judges summarizing the case and the arguments of the prosecution and defense teams.

The court deemed the killing a politically motivated terrorist act and described all four defendants — Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra — as supporters of Hezbollah.

Months before he was killed, the elder Hariri had resigned as prime minister in anger at Syria’s continuing interference in the country, including the presence of Syrian troops.

The judges did not say who had planned the attack, but said it was “very likely” that the final decision to kill him was made after a Feb. 2, 2005, meeting at which Hariri and other politicians had agreed to call for the “immediate and total withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.”

After he was killed, general suspicion fell on Syria, which denied any role. The brazen attack, which injured hundreds of people and left a yawning crater near Beirut’s waterfront, brought more than a million protesters into the streets, and the outcry, combined with international pressure, forced Syria to withdraw its troops.

In reading a summary of their 2,600-page ruling, the judges said the murder plan relied on a massive load of high-grade explosives, and was intended to cause “fear and panic” that would resonate throughout Lebanon and the region.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has repeatedly dismissed the tribunal as a Western conspiracy and has threatened to go after any followers who cooperated with it. The group did not immediately comment on Tuesday’s verdicts, but Nasrallah said recently that it considered the court’s finding irrelevant.

The key figure among the suspects, prosecutors said, was Mustafa Amine Badreddinne, a veteran of Hezbollah’s special operations and close to its top leaders. But the case against him ended when Badreddinne was killed in Syria in 2016.

To critics of the tribunal, the prosecution of a few low-level Hezbollah operatives is a far cry from the findings of United Nations investigators who were sent to Beirut soon after the assassination.

In a report, these investigators called the killing an elaborate professional conspiracy that required “substantial logistical support,” considerable financing and “military precision in its execution.”

Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor who led a second inquiry, ended a six-month investigation in 2005 with a list of close to 20 suspects, including several senior Lebanese and top Syrian officials.

Diplomats said at the time that Mehlis had reluctantly ended his mission because he had been warned about two assassination plots against him. At least two Lebanese police officers who assisted the tribunal’s investigations have been killed.

The prosecutors built their case largely on circumstantial evidence, much of it extensive records of cellphones used as operatives covertly tracked Hariri’s movements for weeks.

The court-appointed defense lawyers had all asked for acquittals, saying there was no proof that their clients had used the cellphones in question. Electronic records of hundreds of calls could reveal location, date and time, the lawyers argued, but they did not confirm the identity of the users.

The verdict was originally scheduled for Aug. 7, but was postponed after the Beirut port explosion.

Questions have been raised about the cost of the court’s 400-strong staff, including a roster of prosecutors and 11 full-time judges who were involved in the case.

Half of its $60 million annual budget has been paid by Lebanon, with help from Saudi Arabia, and half by voluntary contributions from Western countries and Arab Gulf states. For many critics, this enormous expense has not justified the symbolism of an absentee trial.

Ehsan Fayed Al Nasser, whose husband Talal Nasser headed Hariri’s security team and was killed in the blast, said by phone on Tuesday that the tribunal had gathered evidence, identified suspects and sentenced one man. “I am hoping he’ll be arrested and lead us to the mastermind behind this crime,” she said.

Add a Comment