Hariri trial: UN special tribunal sentences Hezbollah duo on appeal
Trial chamber verdict reversed over alleged procedural errors. The appeals judges ruled "unanimously" against the defendants in absentia Hassan Habib Merhi and Hussein Oneissi. Mobile phone network used to coordinate the attack, dubbed the "Green Network",identified.
Beirut (AsiaNews) - The appeals chamber of the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), based in The Hague, yesterday reversed the verdict of the trial chamber, condemning two members of the Shiite group Hezbollah for their "direct involvement" in the attack on February 14, 2005.
The explosion of a car bomb in Beirut had caused the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 other people, including nine bodyguards, who were in the area at the time of the explosion in broad daylight.
His death caused deep sorrow in the country, prompting tens of thousands of citizens to take to the streets to demonstrate and demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops who had been present in the land of the cedars for almost 30 years.
From the outset, suspicions about who ordered the attacks and who armed the Hezbollah-linked attackers were focused on Damascus, while the Shiite movement has always rejected all charges, accusing Israel and its secret services.
The UN appeals judges say errors were made in the first instance that influenced the trial process, which ended with the acquittal of the two defendants, who were also tried yesterday in absentia, overturning "with a unanimous vote" the previous sentence. The defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, complicity in the attack, complicity in international murder and attempted international murder. The judiciary then issued new arrest warrants against Hassan Habib Merhi and Hussein Oneissi, while a third man from the "Party of God", Salim Jamil Ayyash, had already been convicted in 2020.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was established in 2007, two years after Hariri's death, following a cooperation agreement between the Lebanese government and the United Nations and was the first international court to identify individuals responsible for a terrorist attack. The judges focused their investigations on a number of Lebanese citizens, all members of Hezbollah; however, no evidence has emerged in recent years that directly implicates the Shiite movement's top leadership in the assassination of the former Sunni prime minister, who according to several experts was preparing to take over the country's government.
The judges also reconstructed the presence of a network of mobile phones, dubbed the "Green Network", which would have been used by the attackers to coordinate the attacks. A fourth defendant, senior Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine, was a defendant in the case but was killed in Syria in 2016. In addition, shortly after the attacks, Merhi and Oneissi personally oversaw the dissemination of a series of fake videos, blaming Hariri's death on a Palestinian who was allegedly acting under the mandate of a fictitious Sunni extremist group, and arranging for the videos to be delivered to al-Jazeera, thus amplifying the fake-news campaign.
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