15 years after an assassination rocked Lebanon, a trial ends on a muted note
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 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 Nationsbacked tribunal in the Netherlands acquitted three defendants for lack of evidence.
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 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.
The court deemed the killing a politically motivated terrorist act and described all four defendants as supporters of Hezbollah.
Months before he was killed, 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 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 attack, which injured hundreds of people and left a yawning crater near Beirut’s waterfront, brought more than 1 million protesters into the streets, and the outcry, combined with international pressure, forced Syria to withdraw its troops.