David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

An assassination verdict divides Lebanon

Prime Minister Rafic Hariri (JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images)

Almost a decade ago, I went to Lebanon to investigate who had killed its Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. It was a momentous event in the Middle East, and it changed this tiny, beautiful state forever.

Hariri was killed on Valentine’s Day 2005 alongside 21 others after a bomb exploded as his motorcade drove through central Beirut. Today, 15 years later, the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), set up in the wake of his death to bring those responsible for it to justice, finally returned its verdict.

Salim Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi, Assad Hassan Sabra and Hassan Habib Merhi, all accused of being members of the terror group Hezbollah, have been on trial in absentia since 2014. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has publicly refused to extradite them, and even referred to them as ‘saints’, warning that the tribunal was ‘playing with fire’ while its findings could well ‘ignite an inner conflict’. They remain at large to this day.

In the event, only Ayyash was found guilty – of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, murdering Hariri, murdering 21 others and attempting to murder 226 more. The others were acquitted. Mustafa Badreddine, the commander of Hezbollah’s military wing, had also been indicted, but was killed in Syria in 2016. Prosecutors had described him as ‘overall controller of the [assassination] operation’.

The truth is a lot more demoralising for those hoping to see an end to Hezbollah’s seeming invincibility

Much of the case was built around the work of Wissam Eid, a Lebanese intelligence official who analysed phone networks, logs, and data produced from mobile towers before crunching them into a simple excel spreadsheet. From these, he was able to map the movements of Ayyash and Badreddine leading up to the assassination. Eid was brilliant and this proved his undoing. He was killed in a suicide car bomb attack in January 2008.

Indicting Badreddine was a big deal.

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David Patrikarakos
Written by
David Patrikarakos
David Patrikarakos is the author of 'War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century' and 'Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State'

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