Nation braces for verdict in assassination of leader
BEIRUT — More than 15 years after the truck bomb assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, a U.N.backed tribunal in the Netherlands is announcing verdicts this week in the trial of four members of the militant group Hezbollah allegedly involved in the killing, which deeply divided the country.
The verdicts on Tuesday at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in a village on the outskirts of the Dutch city of The Hague, are expected to further add to soaring tensions in Lebanon, two weeks after a catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port that killed nearly 180 people, injured more than 6,000 and destroyed thousands of homes in the Lebanese capital.
Even before the devastating Beirut port blast, the country’s leaders were concerned about violence after the verdicts. Hariri was Lebanon’s most prominent Sunni politician when he and and 21 others were killed on Feb. 14, 2005, while the Iranbacked Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim group.
Tensions between Sunni and Shiites in the Middle East have fueled deadly conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and to a smaller scale in Lebanon. Some Lebanese see the tribunal as an impartial way of uncovering the truth about Hariri’s slaying, while Hezbollah — which denies involvement — calls it an Israeli plot to tarnish the group.
“It’s going to be a great, great moment not only for me as a victim but for me as a Lebanese, as an Arab and as an international citizen looking for justice everywhere,” said prominent former legislator and exCabinet Minister Marwan Hamadeh, who was seriously wounded in a blast four months before Hariri’s assassination. Hamadeh said those who killed Hariri were behind the attempt on his life. The tribunal has indicted one of the suspects in Hariri’s assassination with involvement in the attempt on Hamadeh’s life.
Hariri was killed by a suicide truck bomb on a seaside boulevard in Beirut. The assassination was seen by many in Lebanon as the work of Syria. It stunned and deeply divided the country, which has since been split between a Westernbacked coalition and another supported by Damascus and Iran. Syria has denied having a hand in Hariri’s killing. Following postHariri assassination protests, Damascus was forced to withdraw thousands of troops from Lebanon, ending a threedecade domination of its smaller neighbor.
Initially, five suspects were tried in absentia in the case, all of them Hezbollah members. One of the group’s top military commanders, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed in Syria in 2016 and charges against him were dropped. Hezbollah has vowed never to hand over any suspects.