Hezbollah member guilty of Rafic Hariri’s murder

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands: A UN-backed tribunal on Tuesday found a member of the Hezbollah movement guilty over the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri but cleared three other suspects after a years-long trial.

Salim Ayyash, 56, was convicted in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon based in the Netherlands over a huge suicide bombing in Beirut that killed the billionaire politician and 21 other people. “The trial chamber finds Mr Ayyash guilty beyond reasonable doubt as a co-perpetrator of the assassination of Rafic Hariri,” said David Re, presiding judge of the tribunal.

Addressing victims of the attack, he said: “We sincerely hope the verdict today will give you some sort of closure.” But judges said there was not enough evidence to convict Assad Sabra, 43, Hussein Oneissi, 46, and Hassan Habib Merhi, 54, over the blast, which changed the face of the Middle East.

The judges also said there was no evidence to directly link Syria—the former military overlord in Lebanon—or Hezbollah’s leadership to the attack.

Sentencing for Ayyash will be decided at a later date. He faces life imprisonment if he is ever brought before the court.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has refused to hand over the four defendants and rejected the court’s legitimacy. Hariri’s son Saad, himself a former Lebanese prime minister, was in the heavily secured court for the judgement.

Judges said there was sufficient evidence to show that Ayyash was at the centre of a network of mobile phone users who scoped out Hariri’s movements for months before his assassination.