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Court Issuing Hariri Assassination Verdicts, but Few Expect Justice 15 Years After an Assassination Rocked Lebanon, a Trial Ends on a Muted Note
(about 1 hour later)
As much of Beirut was heading for lunch under a pale February sun, the suicide bomber moved his van toward an approaching convoy. Moments later, he detonated more than two tons of explosives that shredded the armor-plated car of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, killing him and 21 others. More than 200 people were injured in the 2005 attack. 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.
On Tuesday, a special U.N.-backed tribunal in the Netherlands began announcing rulings for four Lebanese men charged with participating in a conspiracy to carry out the attack. The men — Salim Jalil Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra — have all been accused of belonging to Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Shiite political organization with a paramilitary wing backed by Iran. 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?
The rulings were expected to be announced separately over several hours. 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.
Mr. Ayyash, 56, is accused of coordinating the team that carried out the bombing. Mr. Sabra, 43, and Mr. Oneissi, 46, are said to have sent a fake video to the news media, claiming responsibility on behalf of a fictitious group. Mr. Merhi, 54, is accused of general involvement in the plot. Because the suspects have never been found, they were tried in absentia, a practice seldom seen in international courts though permitted under Lebanese law. 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 key figure among the suspects, prosecutors alleged, was Mustafa Amine Badreddinne, a veteran of Hezbollah’s special operations and close to its top leaders. Though among the accused when the trial began in 2014, Mr. Badreddinne was killed in Syria in 2016, ending the case against him. 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.
The prosecution nonetheless used his indictment as evidence of Hezbollah’s crucial role in the operation. He was “a Hezbollah military commander of the first order,” the prosecution said in its closing arguments in 2018. “The attack was masterminded and overseen by Mustafa Badreddine,” it said. Although the court said that Syria and Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group, had motives to “eliminate” Mr. Hariri, it said it lacked direct evidence implicating them in the crime.
The special tribunal, which was requested by Lebanon and sat in a town outside The Hague rather than Beirut for security reasons, has drawn much criticism for focusing on some of the foot soldiers rather than those responsible for an assassination that shook Lebanon and much of the Middle East. “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.”
At the end of the six-year trial, with judges from Australia, Jamaica and Lebanon on the bench, the question — who ordered the killing? — still has not been answered. It is unlikely that Mr. Ayyash will ever be found, he said, and in any case, he was “a cog in the system,” not the attack’s mastermind.
The verdict was scheduled for Aug. 7, but was postponed after a massive chemical explosion in the port of Beirut that killed more than 170 people, injured some 6,000 and destroyed a large part of the city. Mr. 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.
Immediately after Mr. Hariri’s assassination in 2005, general suspicion fell on Syria. 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.
Mr. Hariri, a wealthy businessman and Lebanon’s dominant Sunni Muslim politician, had months earlier ended his fifth term as prime minister in anger at Syria’s continuing interference in his country. According to his associates, Mr. Hariri had recently clashed with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, but he had decided to run again for office. He wanted an end to a presence in Lebanon by Syria’s military and intelligence agencies that had gone on for three decades. 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.
The brazen attack in central Beirut brought more than a million protesters into the streets, and the outcry combined with international pressure forced Syria to withdraw its troops. Syria has denied any role in the assassination. 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.
If found guilty, the men facing the judgments Tuesday would be sentenced at a future date, but are unlikely to serve any time as they remain in hiding. Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said it felt as if the tribunal were “from a different era.”
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has repeatedly dismissed the tribunal as a tool of its enemies and has threatened to go after any followers who cooperated with it. “The tribunal means nothing to us and its rulings are of no value,” he said at the time of the trial. 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.
To critics, the rulings announced on Tuesday involving a few low-level Hezbollah operatives is a far cry from the findings of United Nations investigators sent to Beirut soon after the assassination of Mr. Hariri. “After 15 years and a Special Tribunal for Lebanon with international investigators and we end up with this?” Ms. Yahya asked. “How is anyone ever going to be held accountable for the port explosion?”
A first report 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. 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 — Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.Diplomats said at the time that Mr. 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.
Unable to produce enough proof of who ordered the assassination, prosecutors instead painted a broader picture of the motive for the crime. The prosecutors built their case largely on circumstantial evidence, much of it extensive records of cellphones used as operatives covertly tracked Mr. Hariri’s movements for weeks.
One of the prosecutors, Nigel Povoas, told the court that the scale of the operation “undoubtedly had a political purpose” linked to Mr. Hariri’s opposition to Damascus’ long interference in his country. 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.
“Hariri was perceived by those who supported Syrian control as a severe threat to their interests and their security, a proxy of the West,” Mr. Povoas said. “This is the reason, the nonpersonal motive, behind the crime.” The verdict was originally scheduled for Aug. 7, but was postponed after the Beirut port explosion.
Asked why the prosecution had not determined who was behind the killing, Wajed Ramadan, a spokesperson for the tribunal, said in an email: “A judicial institution can only try people based on evidence that can stand up in court.” 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.
Lacking reliable insider witnesses, prosecutors built their case largely on circumstantial evidence. Much of it involved extensive records of cellphones that were used in proximity to one another as operatives covertly tracked Mr. Hariri’s movements for weeks. They included brief calls, prosecutors said, as the Hariri convoy left the parliament area and moved toward the fatal ambush near Beirut’s waterfront. 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.
The court-appointed defense lawyers have all asked for acquittals, saying there was no proof beyond reasonable doubt 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 because there were no voice recordings or intercepts and only a few text messages. Ehsan Fayed Al Nasser, whose husband Talal Nasser headed Mr. 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.
Even after the verdicts are released, the tribunal’s work will not be over. Defense lawyers may appeal. A new terrorism case has just opened against Mr. Ayyash, one of those accused in the Hariri plot. The tribunal’s mandate covers only crimes committed during a 14-month period in 2004 and 2005, but its primary focus has been on Mr. Hariri’s killing. “I am hoping he’ll be arrested and lead us to the mastermind behind this crime,” she said.
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. Hwaida Saad and Kareem Chehayeb contributed reporting.
Matthew Levitt, an expert on Hezbollah at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he shared the frustration about the absentee suspects.
But he said he saw an upside for victims, their families and for Lebanon, citing what he called a “professional, impartial, third-party prosecution.”
The trial may have achieved “something important,” he said, by “holding Hezbollah publicly accountable for an act of terrorism targeting fellow Lebanese citizens.”