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Tribunal Convicts Hezbollah Member in Hariri Assassination, Acquits
Three Others Jared Malsin 9-11 minutes

BEIRUT—An international tribunal convicted a member of Hezbollah of
terrorism and homicide over the assassination of Lebanon’s former
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 but acquitted three others and
found no evidence that the militia and political group’s leadership
was involved in the plot.

Tuesday’s verdict comes just two weeks after the deadly Beirut
explosion and could heighten tensions in Lebanon. For many, it raises
painful memories of an attack that deeply divided the country across
political and sectarian lines. At the time, Mr. Hariri was Lebanon’s
most prominent Sunni politician, while Hezbollah is an Iran- and
Syria-allied Shiite group.

The tribunal convicted Salim Jamil Ayyash, a Lebanese national, of
conspiracy to commit terrorism, committing an act of terrorism, and
homicide, among other crimes. The judges said there was insufficient
evidence to convict three other defendants in the case. All four were
tried in absentia as their whereabouts are unknown.

The tribunal said that Syria and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful
political faction, may have had motives to eliminate Mr. Hariri and some
of his political allies, but that “there was no evidence that Hezbollah
leadership had any involvement in Mr. Hariri’s assassination and there
is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement in it.”

The suicide truck bombing in February 2005 killed Mr. Hariri and 21 others
and injured 226 people, leaving a crater near Beirut’s waterfront. The
explosion sparked mass protests that caused Syria to withdraw forces
from Lebanon, scaling back Damascus’s military and political influence
there nearly 30 years after an invasion during Lebanon’s civil war.

The panel of Lebanese and international judges of the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon in the Netherlands read out the findings in
the more-than-2,600-page judgment Tuesday.  Photo: piroschka van de
wouw/Reuters

Though it didn’t accuse Hezbollah’s top leadership directly, the
tribunal pointed to other signs of the group’s involvement in the
attack. Prosecutors accused Mr. Ayyash of organizing the operation
and also said he was in contact with another Hezbollah commander,
Mustafa Badreddine, who the tribunal accused of masterminding the
bomb plot. Mr. Badreddine died in 2016 after being deployed to the war
in Syria.

Set up by the United Nations, the tribunal wasn’t expected to blame
Hezbollah as a whole since it wasn’t tasked with establishing the
culpability of groups or nations, but rather assigned to try individual
cases like the one that concluded on Tuesday.

At the time of his assassination, Mr. Hariri had recently resigned
as prime minister and was preparing for parliamentary elections a few
months later. A rival of Hezbollah who was seen as an opponent of Syrian
influence in Lebanon, Mr. Hariri also had strong ties to the U.S.,
France and Saudi Arabia.

Saad Hariri, the slain leader’s son and himself a former prime minister,
said the verdict “clearly demonstrated the political background” of
the assassination, noting his father’s participation in a Lebanese
political meeting that demanded an end to Syrian military involvement
in Lebanon.

“I think today, everyone’s expectations were much higher than what
came out, but I think the tribunal came out with a verdict that was
satisfying. We accept it,” he told reporters outside the court.

Another of Mr. Hariri’s sons, Bahaa, reacted skeptically to the notion
that the group’s leadership may not have been involved.

“I find it inconceivable. It’s appalling what I’m hearing, that
they sat down over a coffee and decided on their own to assassinate
Hariri,” Bahaa Hariri said.

A representative of Hezbollah’s media unit didn’t respond to a
request for comment. Hezbollah has previously denied allegations of its
involvement in the Hariri assassination and dismissed the tribunal as
politically motivated.

The verdict comes at a particularly vulnerable time for Lebanon, as
Hezbollah and other Lebanese politicians face public outrage over the
Aug. 4 explosion that killed at least 178 people, injured 6,000 others
and cut a path of destruction through the center of the capital.

For some Lebanese, the tribunal’s much-delayed verdict of a trial with
no defendants in the courtroom represented a failure of justice at a
moment when the country is also wrestling with how to investigate and
hold accountable those responsible for the port explosion.

The mixed verdict, convicting one Hezbollah member and acquitting three
others, appeared to leave both supporters and opponents of Hezbollah
with points to both applaud and criticize.

“Ultimately, it is a deeply unsatisfactory outcome because the basic
questions are left unanswered and will continue to divide the Lebanese,”
said Nadim Houry, the director of the Arab Reform Initiative and a
longtime human rights advocate, writing on Twitter. “International
investigation did not manage to crack the case.”

Few expect the verdict to significantly alter Lebanon’s political
landscape. Most people are focused on more immediate challenges including
rebuilding from the blast amid the country’s worst economic crisis in
decades and a surging coronavirus outbreak.

After more than a decade, Lebanese citizens have mostly made up their
minds about Hezbollah’s suspected involvement in the assassination.

“The results of the tribunal have already been baked in, because it’s
not a surprise and the real shocks came years ago,” said Paul Salem,
president of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The panel of Lebanese and international judges in the Special Tribunal
for Lebanon gathered in a beige-walled courtroom outside The Hague,
the Netherlands on Tuesday.

“The attack was an act of terrorism that was designed to spread fear
among the population,” said presiding judge David Re, as the panel
read out the findings in the more than 2,600-page judgment.

The four defendants were charged with nine counts of various crimes
under Lebanese law, including conspiracy to commit terrorism, committing
a terrorist act and homicide.

The prosecution’s case was based on an intricate web of cell-phone data
that it alleged showed a conspiracy to track the former prime minister’s
movements, kill him, and then issue a false claim of responsibility in
the name of another, possibly fictional group.

The charge of conspiracy against Mr. Ayyash’s three co-defendants
centered on an alleged plan to film a fake claim of responsibility. The
court ruled that some of the data was circumstantial, and that it failed
to rule out alternative scenarios.

For some in Lebanon, the long-delayed verdict in the Hariri case only
adds to a sense of exhaustion and outrage at the country’s political
elite, who many also blame for the port explosion.

“It comes from how frankly appalled we are with how incompetent and
how irresponsible they’ve been in dealing with such disasters,”
said Sami Atallah, head of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies,
a think tank in Beirut.

The grave of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut.  Photo:
hannah mckay/Reuters

The judgment also comes when Hezbollah is under pressure due to public
anger over the explosion and the country’s political and economic
crises.

Though the armed group has widespread support among some Lebanese who
view it as a protector, many have come to view the organization as at
the core of a corrupt political system.

Protests that forced the Lebanese government to resign last week have
denounced Hezbollah along with the country’s other political forces,
which are widely seen as sharing responsibility for the years of
mismanagement and negligence that culminated in the port explosion.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his government stepped down
amid mounting pressure from protesters demanding accountability for an
explosion in Beirut on Aug. 4 that killed more than 150 people. Photo:
Hannah McKay/Reuters

—Valentina Pop and Nazih Osseiran contributed to this article.