Mideast Strife Turns Trial on Beirut Assassination Into Another Fault Line
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Version 0 of 1. UNITED NATIONS — Perhaps it was wishful thinking from the start. The huge car bomb that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon nearly nine years ago led to an ambitious international investigation intended to bring about a new era of accountability to a country long splintered by political violence. That effort, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours, is finally going to trial — and it could not come at a trickier time. As prosecutors prepare to make their case this week, the sectarian tensions spilling over from Syria have led to a new wave of killings among Lebanon’s Shiite and Sunni political factions. Now, the international tribunal is being dragged into the center of this rapidly intensifying crisis. Instead of resolving a case that split a volatile nation, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has become another front in the deadly sectarian showdown playing itself out in the region. “The tribunal has its own dynamic, its own sort of lineage, but it’s become part of this larger conflict,” said Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. “It is kind of held hostage by larger events going on.” The prosecution contends that all four of the suspects going on trial on the outskirts of The Hague on Thursday are supporters of Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite group in Lebanon that is sending fighters to help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his civil war against an array of Sunni rebels. Hezbollah, which built its reputation as a foe of Israel, could face new threats to its claim as Lebanon’s defender if more evidence emerges that the group has turned its weapons on Muslims, not to mention the country’s former prime minister. Using records from over 50 cellphones, the prosecution plans to detail, for the first time, how the operatives meticulously planned and carried out the attack on Mr. Hariri, tracking his movements for months, procuring the van used in the bombing and following his convoy as it left Parliament en route to his residence. But the suspects have evaded arrest and will be tried in absentia, the first time in an international tribunal since Nuremberg. Even if they are convicted, they are entitled to a new trial if they are apprehended later. Complicating matters, the prosecution opens in the shadow of the killing of one of Mr. Hariri’s political allies, Mohamad B. Chatah, in late December. Since then, Mr. Chatah’s supporters have issued excited and hyperbolic statements demanding that the tribunal greatly expand its mandate and seek justice for his killing as well, a move that the United Nations Security Council would be unlikely to approve amid the turmoil in the region. “Our martyr and beloved comrade, Mohamad, your name will be loudly pronounced at the opening sessions of the international tribunal in a few days in The Hague,” said the office of Saad Hariri, the former prime minister’s son and political heir. Another Hezbollah opponent predicted on television in recent days that the tribunal would eventually indict Hezbollah’s powerful leader, Hassan Nasrallah, an even more unlikely prospect given that the court has focused on the attackers, not their political patrons. Hezbollah leaders have dismissed the court as proof of a broader Western plot against their organization and urged Lebanese not to cooperate with the investigation. Last year, unidentified hackers splashed the names of witnesses on a Lebanese newspaper’s website, an intimidating move in a country with a long history of political killings. “A lot of people think they can corner Hezbollah with an international indictment,” said Kamel Wazne, a political analyst in Beirut who is distrustful of the court. “But with Hezbollah fighting an open war in Syria, sending fighters openly, who is going to come and enforce anything at this point?” The court has spent about $325 million since opening its doors in 2009, with the aim of trying those who carried out the attack that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 others on Feb 14, 2005. Its mandate can stretch across a 14-month period, to include related killings, though it stops well short of the current violence straining the tenuous politics of Lebanon. But with the newly inflamed tensions between Lebanon’s opposing factions, the court has become something of a political football, used by each side to highlight the perceived wrongs being committed against it. That has left the tribunal straining to prove its credibility as an unbiased arbiter of justice. The prosecutor, Norman Farrell, said he regretted having to conduct the trial without the defendants in court, but insisted that the tribunal would help the quest for accountability. “Though it is not complete justice or final justice, in the sense that the accused are not present, it is a form of justice,” Mr. Farrell said. He added that he hoped the trial would “contribute to the desire at least to move towards the end of impunity.” The head of the defense office, François Roux, said by email that while he believed that the defendants’ rights were “adequately defended” by expert counsel, their absence plainly complicated their defense. The defense team cannot ferret out new witnesses, drill down into witness statements or “have access to information in the possession of your client that could potentially exonerate him.” The indictments of the four defendants — a fifth suspect was indicted last year but is not yet part of the coming trial — offer a case study of how important cellphones can be in a criminal inquiry. Investigators obtained a trove of cellphone call records from the Lebanese authorities to assemble a detailed portrait of whom the suspects called, when and how often they called, and their locations in the months and hours leading up to the attack on Mr. Hariri. Some of the suspects carried up to eight phones, according to the indictment, using specific sets of phones for specific purposes: to track Mr. Hariri in the weeks before the attack, to buy a Mitsubishi van for $11,000 in cash and, finally, to spread what the prosecution calls false information to the news media about who carried out the attack. One suspect, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, used five phones in 14 months, the prosecution says, using one for a few weeks before switching to another. The phones were particularly active on Feb. 14, 2005, the day of the bombing. There were 33 calls among one group of phones — the indictment calls it “the red network” — from 11 a.m. to 12:53 p.m. Two minutes later, as Mr. Hariri’s convoy passed the St. George Hotel on Rue Minet el Hos’n, the van exploded. Remains of the suicide bomber who drove the van were found at the scene. His identity is unknown. Hezbollah’s political opponents, led by the Hariri family’s March 14 bloc, have contended that the tribunal has turned up evidence of Hezbollah’s hand in the assassination. Trials in absentia are extremely rare in international courts. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia initially faced a similar challenge in bringing suspects to the dock, until British soldiers, who were in the Balkans as part of a peacekeeping force authorized by the United Nations, started arresting them, recalled David Bosco, an American University professor and the author of a new book on international courts. It helped that Western powers had enormous economic leverage, too, he said. Lebanon is altogether a different story. The United States and Britain are champions of the tribunal. Both provide financial support, as does the government of Lebanon. But Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful political party, is supported by Syria and Iran, leaving the court with little influence over Hezbollah’s decision not to cooperate. “In situations where you have less leverage, less control, it’s much more difficult to do these kinds of cases,” Mr. Bosco said. The Lebanon court is unusual in another way: It is focused on an act of terrorism against a leader of one political faction. That has made it especially ripe for criticism. “By its very nature you’re going to have more accusations of one-sided justice, and that clearly affects its credibility,” said David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, who worked on several international tribunals, including briefly the one for Lebanon. “One had hoped this would be a starting point for much wider accountability.” |