On February 14, 2005, a 1000 kg explosion of TNT killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 21 others, including the Minister of Economy and the Prime Minister’s bodyguards. On August 18, the UN Special International Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) on the death of Rafiq Hariri found a member of the militant group Hezbollah guilty of involvement in the assassination of the former premier. The Judge, David Re, said Salem Jamil Ayyash had been found guilty of homicide and committing a terrorist act in the 2005 bombing that killed Hariri. The court acquitted the other three defendants, who like Ayyash were tried in absentia. A fifth man – Mustafa Badreddine, commander of Hezbollah’s military wing – was withdrawn from prosecution after being killed in Syria in 2016. The judges also said that there was no evidence that the leaders of the Hezbollah group could implicate the attack.
Who killed Rafiq Hariri and why? This was not the first political murder in Lebanon and it would not even be the last. But his death caused large mass demonstrations which led to the end of the “de facto” Syrian occupation of Lebanon since 1976 and forced Bashar al Assad and the Syrian army to withdraw from Lebanon.
Taking a few steps back to the attack: in 2000 there was the withdrawal of the Israeli military forces that had occupied Lebanon since 1982 (always leaving a small part occupied in southern Lebanon) and the great credit for the end of the Israeli occupation went to the movement of Hezbollah. Precisely this small occupied part of the country would have been the cause of the continuation of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel which helped to keep southern Lebanon in economic depression by preventing reconstruction and driving away investment by entrepreneurs. When Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri turned to Syria, asking to stop Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel to attract foreign investment, Syria rejected the request. While the Lebanese State in those years went on with its diplomacy, Hezbollah went on with its policy against Israel. In 2003, the United States reopened the American Consulate in Beirut, almost twenty years after its closure. Hezbollah, with German mediation, without any intervention by the Lebanese State, in 2004 managed to free 400 Palestinian prisoners and 23 Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the bodies of 3 Israeli soldiers and the body of Colonel Ron Aarad.
Clearly Lebanon was pursuing two different paths. On the one hand the country was trying to gradually gain full sovereignty, but on the other hand this pushed Iran and Syria to row against it. Syria played a central role in all Lebanese elections from 1992 to 2005 and would also have favored the election of President Emile Lahoud in 2004. Elections that would have had strong opposition led by Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who also strongly demanded the end of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The 2004 in Lebanon also led to a response from the UN, with resolution 1559, which provided for the disarmament of the militia, talking about Hezbollah (the only militia to have still kept arms after the end of the war) and the withdrawal of the foreign troops (meaning the Syrian troops). In October 2004, when Lahoud was re-elected, Hariri resigned. Four months later, on February 14, 2005, Hariri was murdered. The attack sparked huge mass demonstrations against Syria, which was held up as responsible. Hezbollah reacted with a counter-demonstration, in memory of Hariri in which it condemned his murder, but reaffirmed the role of Syria as guarantor of peace in Lebanon. The tension between the two groups went to an extreme when a court had to be voted on for the murder of Hariri. Nabih Berri (speaker of the Parliament and leader of the Shi’a party “Amal”) refused to bring parliament together with this item on the agenda, but Prime Minister Siniora asked for action by the UN Security Council to a warrant on an international court. President Lahoud refused to sign the agreement, which, in reality, would still make the legality of the agreement between the Lebanese government and the Security Council questionable. Several pro-Syrian ministers resigned but this did not stop the government from approving the creation of an international court of inquiry into Hariri’s death.
The International Criminal Court was established by the Security Council in May 2007, according to Chapter VII of the UN charter. In a strong climate of high political tension, where Syria and Iran have always blown the fire of the division between Sunnis and Shi’a, rumors spread according to which the International Tribunal for Lebanon was in possession of documents accusing Hezbollah members of the murder of Rafiq Hariri. The Tribunal stated that it intended to target neither party leaders nor heads of State (it would have been a tacit agreement made with Russia which would otherwise have vetoed the creation of the Tribunal), but only to ascertain individual responsibility. The Tribunal officially began its work on 1 March 2009, establishing its headquarters in the Netherlands for security reasons, with a branch office in Beirut. The Damascus government was the first to be pointed out by Lebanon as the instigator of the assassination. On the basis of various testimonies, four Lebanese officers were imprisoned without real charges, believed to be elements of connection between the assassination and the Syrian government, thanks to the logistical support of Hezbollah. After nearly four years in prison, they were all released and declared innocent. Officially the accusations against them had been induced by false testimony released by witnesses. Various resignations from posts within the Tribunal and the release of four innocent officers increased internal discussions within the two Lebanese political coalitions.
In reality, the evidence that one of the Lebanese intelligence officers of the ISF, Wissam Eid, have found, would have been fundamental in the investigation of the Tribunal. He managed to decipher a telephonic network linked to members and military leaders of Hezbollah which later became the central evidence of the accusation by STL. Wissam Eid paid with his life. He was murdered in a car bomb in 2008.
In July 2010, Nasrallah stated that he had heard from the PM Saad Hariri that the Tribunal would accuse Hezbollah and no longer Syrian officers. He called for national unity and threatened to “cut off the hands” of anyone who tried to arrest Hezbollah members. In a tense political climate where the accusation of Hariri’s assassination against Hezbollah members hovered in the air, the fear that the evidence could lead to Tehran, and the reconfirmation by the government of support for the International Tribunal, fell the Lebanese government chaired by Saad Hariri in January 2011. Thanks to the new majority created, Hezbollah asked for the vote against collaboration with the Tribunal and the cut in its financing for the share that belonged to the Lebanese State, obtaining the rejection of the charges and the referral of the investigation to the Lebanese judges. Under international pressure Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati defended himself by declaring that Lebanon’s cooperation with the Tribunal would continue.
On June 30, 2011, the International Tribunal issued arrest warrants against four people. The warrants were countersigned by the Lebanese authorities. The accused, this time compared to the previous ones accused by the false witness, were instead nailed by cell phone calls and other certain evidence, they were members of Hezbollah: Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra. In The Hague on January 16, 2014, nine years after Hariri’s death, the International Tribunal opened the trial for the murder even though the four accused of the crime were not present in the courtroom. Hezbollah has never recognized the legitimacy of the Tribunal and has guaranteed the inaction of its members accused of the crime. A fifth person was added to the list of four in 2013. This is Hassan Habib Mehri, also a member of God’s party.
In 2014, the Tribunal accused two journalists and two media outlets, Karma Mohamed Tahsin al-Khayat of al-Jadeed TV and the same broadcaster and Ibrahim Mohamed al-Amin of the newspaper al-Akhbar and the same newspaper, for interfering in justice by having published names of alleged witnesses, thus causing distrust of witnesses in the capacity and will of the Tribunal for the protection of its witnesses. Both journalists and the media are Hezbollah sympathizers.
Hezbollah accused the Tribunal of lack of professionalism and politicization against Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. As already mentioned, the Court presented two problems: a question of legality, given that its birth had not been decided by an authorization from the Lebanese parliament as it should have been according to the Constitution, but by the UN Security Council and the question of unreliable witnesses used in his early years of investigation. The verdict of the Court arrived after 15 years, after many errors and has partially satisfied. But let’s try to read the positive part: for the first time in 40 years after many political killers in Lebanon, at least one of them has the name of a culprit. He would have expected much more, but the verdict clearly reflects the compromise chosen by most European countries which include only Hezbollah’s military wing on the terrorist blacklist, leaving the political wing out (although no one believes that such a division exists).The verdict is once again giving a clear message: Hezbollah should disarm itself and this is now a necessity for Lebanon’s survival.
