Special Tribunal Verdict: Unfinished Business in Lebanon

By Cilina Nasser

People in Lebanon have been measuring the success of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) on the 2005 killing of former prime minister Rafik Hariri primarily through a political lens. The weakened verdict handed down by the Special Tribunal on August 18th allows rival political groups in the country to loosely interpret it and, consequently, promote it as a victory to score political gains.  

The verdict found one Hezbollah-linked individual, Salim Ayyash, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, committing a terrorist act, the intentional homicide of Rafik Hariri and 21 others, and attempted homicide of the 226 injured. Another three Hezbollah-linked individuals were acquitted of all charges. Proceedings against a fifth, senior Hezbollah military commander Mustafa Badreddine, were stopped after he was killed in Syria in 2016. Additionally, the Trial Chamber of the STL, which was brought into force through UN Security Council Resolution 1757 in 2007, said there was no evidence that there was Syrian involvement or that Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in the killing of Rafik Hariri and 21 others on 14 February 2005 in central Beirut, when more than two tons of explosives went off near his heavily protected six-vehicle convoy.

In Lebanon, there was an immediate and general sense of disappointment among the supporters of Rafik Hariri and other activists who were expecting a judgement providing a stronger connection between the accused and Hezbollah’s chain of command or Syria-particularly after waiting 15 years from the beginning of the investigations and more than six years after the start of the trial.

Critics saw the verdict as unsatisfactory because it failed to answer even the most basic questions: who the other individuals were who carried out the attack, and who ordered it. This casts doubt over the worthiness of the establishment of the STL, which is of international character and composed of Lebanese and international judges, for costing Lebanon hundreds of millions of dollars as the debt-ridden country has been paying 49% of its funding since its inauguration in 2009. 

An example of striking contrast is the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a United Nations court that sentenced 90 individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity or other crimes that took place during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s, leaving a powerful legacy of war crimes justice. But the STL, which is  the first of its kind to deal with terrorism as a discrete crime, faced a number of challenges, including that no arrests were conducted by Lebanese authorities, therefore the trials were in absentia with Hezbollah repeatedly saying that it would not hand over the accused. Further, evidence presented before the Special Tribunal relied heavily  upon expert cell site analysis of call data records of the mobile phones it attributed to the four accused individuals.

This verdict comes at a particularly sensitive time with heightened calls for credible and transparent investigations into the explosion that ripped through the Beirut Port on 4 August killing around 200 people, injuring thousands and damaging an estimated 300,000.  

Hezbollah has opposed the STL arguing that no such courts were established to address the enormous number of other serious human rights violations committed in Lebanon in the past. In particular, the armed group points to violations committed during Israeli wars and the occupation of southern Lebanon.  This allows Hezbollah to make the argument that the establishment of the STL was to serve political reasons. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has referred to the four accused in the past as group members and ‘brothers’ and vowed that they shall not be found by the Special Tribunal. His acknowledgement that those accused are members of Hezbollah showed that the armed group would not distance itself from them and that even if they were to be convicted, the conviction was political rather than factually based. Hezbollah and its media ignored the verdict released on the 18th.  

Lawyers and analysts supporting Hezbollah, however, have used the limited outcome to say that after all these years, the STL was able to convict only one individual based on telecommunications evidence.  This has allowed the argument that the accusations against Hezbollah for the past decade and the half were baseless, and the consequent political pressure against the armed group was therefore unfair.

But former prime minister Saad Hariri, who is the son of the assassinated politician, announced outside the court that he accepted the Special Tribunal’s verdict and that the acquittal of three out of the four accused Hezbollah-linked individuals proved that the Special Tribunal was not politically motivated.

More importantly, Hariri urged Hezbollah to hand over Salim Ayyash, the only individual found guilty by the Special Tribunal. Of course, Hezbollah won’t hand him over and Saad Hariri knows that Hezbollah won’t hand him over.  Hezbollah does not seem to care to be seen internationally as above the law, because it is one of Lebanon’s most powerful groups despite the international community’s dissatisfaction.

For politicians, what will now matter about the Special Tribunal’s verdict will not be whether or not investigators looked into all possible avenues to collect evidence or whether or not the tribunal complied with international standards for fair trial. Instead, Lebanon’s political establishment, composed of fierce opponents, will each interpret this verdict and then use it, ignore it, or manipulate it for the next several years to achieve political goals. Remember the name Salim Ayyash because it will be filling a big chunk of Lebanon’s next chapter.

Cilina Nasser is a Beirut-based independent researcher and expert on human rights who also works on transitional justice issues. She has worked extensively on investigating human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, primarily in Syria and Lebanon, as well as other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.  

Judgment STL-11-01 is by Special Tribunal for Lebanon and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.