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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
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In reversal, tribunal convicts Hezbollah members of killing Lebanese prime minister

The two men were initially found not guilty in 2020 after judges were unconvinced by the largely circumstantial evidence against them.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — An appeals chamber in The Hague found two Hezbollah members guilty Thursday of the 2005 assassination that killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. 

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, an ad-hoc tribunal created by the United Nations in 2009 to investigate the suicide bomb attack which killed Hariri and 22 others, overturned the 2020 acquittal of Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Hassan Habib Merhi, convicting them of committing a terrorist act and murder. 

"The appeals chamber has unanimously decided to reverse the acquittals,” Presiding judge Ivana Hrdlickova said, reading the judgment out loud on behalf of the five-judge panel. The court was on the brink of shutting its doors after the initial verdict was reached in 2020, but donors stepped in to ensure the appeal could be seen through

Hariri, a Lebanese business tycoon, became the country’s first prime minister following a 15-year civil war. His six-car convoy was traveling from a café en route to his home along a seaside road in Beirut on Valentine’s Day 2005 when a Mitsubishi van packed with 4,000 pounds of TNT exploded nearby. 

Five men in total were charged, marking the first time the crime of terrorism has been prosecuted in an international tribunal. The U.N. court, based in the Netherlands due to security concerns in Lebanon, initially found no evidence for the involvement of the Syrian government or Hezbollah leadership in the 2005 attack, but did find sufficient evidence to convict Salim Ayyash of all five charges. The 2,600-page decision came two weeks after a massive explosion ripped through the country’s capital, killing nearly 200 people and injuring thousands. 

The prosecution chose not to appeal the acquittal of Assad Hassan Sabra, who was seen as having the weakest connection to the attack. The charges against a fifth man, Mustafa Badreddine, were dropped after he was killed in Damascus in 2016. 

Nearly all of the evidence was circumstantial telecommunications data. The prosecution mapped out the movements of the five men using the location data of more than 50 phones.

In reading the appellate ruling summary Thursday, Hrdlickova said there was a “sufficient connection” to overturn the acquittal of Oneissi and Merhi.

All of the men were tried in absentia, a first for an international court since the post-World War II Nuremberg trials. The whereabouts of Ayyash, Oneissi and Merhi are unknown, though they are believed to be in Syria. Lawyers for Ayyash, who was given five concurrent life sentences, also wanted to appeal his conviction but were told there was no legal framework to allow an appeal to be brought for someone convicted in absentia.

Should any of the men be captured or turn themselves in, they could all ask for a retrial, though it is unclear what court would hear such a proceeding. 

The tribunal, originally given a three-year mandate and predicted to cost $120 million, has come under fire for both its expenses and slow pace. The investigation and trial have taken over 15 years and cost more than $1 billion. Lebanon contributes 49% of the tribunal's budget with the remaining 51% coming from voluntary contributions from 28 countries. 

A hearing on sentencing for Merhi and Oneissi will be scheduled in the coming months.

Follow @mollyquell
Categories / Appeals, Criminal, International

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