Lebanon indicts four suspects over Rafik Hariri assassination in 2005
Issuing of warrants puts huge pressure on new PM as Hezbollah militants are accused of bomb attack that killed more than 20
Martin Chulov in Beirut guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 June 2011 20.03 BST
The scene in Beirut after a car bomb exploded in 2005, killing the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, and more than 20 others. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA
A Lebanese prosecutor has approved arrest warrants for four members of the militant group Hezbollah who are accused of assassinating the country's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in an attack that continues to reverberate more than six years later.
The indictments, keenly anticipated for two years, were handed over by the UN-backed special tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to a Beirut judge. The judge now has 30 days to locate the men, whom investigators accuse of detonating the car bomb that killed Hariri and more than 20 others on Valentine's Day 2005.
News of the warrants drew applause from the recently ousted government in Beirut, known as the 14 March alliance, but silence from Hezbollah and its allies, which have sufficient seats in a new parliament to allow them to derail any investigation.
The four names were disclosed by Lebanese media before the meeting between prosecutor general Sayed Merza, who received the files, and STL officials had concluded.
They are believed to be Hezbollah's current chief operations officer, Moustafa Badreddine, another senior official, Salim Ayyash, and two lower-profile members of the group, Assad Sabra and Hassan Aneiyssi.
Badreddine is one of Hezbollah's founding members and a former close confidant of the group's feared military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in Damascus more than three years ago.
"Today, we witness together a distinctive historic moment in the political, judicial, security and moral life of Lebanon," said Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, who was ousted as prime minister in January. "This progress in the course of justice and the special tribunal is for all the Lebanese without any exception, and it should be a turning point in the history of fighting organised political crime in Lebanon and the Arab world."
Hezbollah offered no comment, referring queries to the previous statements it made on the tribunal. The group's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, revealed 11 months ago that his members would be among those accused, preparing his followers for Thursday's announcement.
The issuing of the warrants has placed enormous pressure on the new prime minister, Najib Miqati, whose Hezbollah-dominated cabinet has demanded he disavow the tribunal and cut Lebanon's share of funding for it. Just as vehement is the opposition's insistence that he continue to comply with the court.
Miqati's inability to serve both agendas will almost inevitably draw in regional players, who are heavily invested in the process, between now and any future verdicts. Syria and Iran strongly back Hezbollah, while Saudi Arabia, the US and France are insisting that Lebanon continues to support the tribunal. Miqati attempted to douse tensions on both sides by urging people to be "reasonable and far-sighted".
"There are those who want to target the country and push us towards strife," he said.
Sectarian hotspots across the country remained calm in the hours after the indictments were issued. Security forces increased patrols in known flashpoint areas, particularly those with mixed Shia and Sunni Muslim populations. Sunnis largely revered Hariri as a patron, while almost all Lebanon's Shias are united behind Nasrallah, or a group allied to Hezbollah, known as Amal.
Hezbollah has conceded that the allegations contained in the indictments pose a threat to its legitimacy. Its narrative blames Israel and the US, which it accuses of using a network of spies to manipulate telephone records that have been central to the STL investigation.
The tribunal had been criticised for the slow pace of its work and the limited scope of its investigation, which has focused on the alleged operational cell that carried out the bombing.
The predecessor to the STL focused heavily on who ordered the execution. A report handed down in late 2005 accused senior Syrian officials of conspiring to kill Hariri, but made little progress on identifying the perpetrators.
Lebanon is a parliamentary republic within the overall framework of confessionalism, a form of consociationalism in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Lebanon
The thought arises, that the 'confessional' nature of the Lebanese governmental structure is one which should be eliminated, just to enhance the democratic nature of the country.
Hariri indictment claims assassins given away by their phones
Hezbollah suspects can be linked to phones used to plot killing of former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri, UN tribunal says
Martin Chulov in Beirut guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 August 2011 17.21 BST
Vehicles burn following the 2005 bomb attack that killed the former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon. Photograph: AP
Mobile phones used by the assassins of the former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri mapped their movements as they tracked him around Beirut for more than a year, then eventually betrayed their identities, according to a United Nations tribunal established to investigate the killing.
A prosecution indictment, which has charged four members of Hezbollah for conspiring to kill Hariri, alleges the phones were used for different phases of the complex plot and can conclusively be linked to each of the accused.
The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday morning, more than six years after Hariri was killed by a two-and-a-half-tonne car bomb on the Beirut waterfront and almost two months after it was handed to the Lebanese authorities by the tribunal, based in The Hague.
It focuses heavily on networks of phones that investigators believe were intended to be used only to plot the assassination. Five networks were identified and hundreds of calls made by the numbers linked to them have been traced to cell towers near where Hariri was at the time.
The 47-page indictment does not explicitly state how any of the accused, Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Assad Sabra, or Hussein Oneissi, were linked to the networks, but implies that one or more may have used a covert phone to call a number that they were known to use privately. Investigators are believed to have put together their case from one or more such lapse.
The indictment also suggests that documentary evidence and witness statements helped corroborate what it concedes is a largely circumstantial case. Badreddine, who is one of Hezbollah's most senior figures, is accused of being the controller of the group, while Ayyash is alleged to have carried out the operation.
Both are brothers in law of a former overall military commander, Imad Mugniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008.
Sabra and Oneissi are accused of orchestrating a false claim of responsibility in the hours following the blast on 14 February 2005 that killed Hariri. Oneissi is accused of recruiting a 22-year-old Palestinian, Abu Adass, from al-Houry mosque in west Beirut who would be used to make a videotaped false claim of responsibility. Adass vanished on 16 January 2005, a month before Hariri was killed.
Hariri's assassination polarised an already brittle Lebanese state and it is still dealing with the repercussions. The allegations of Hezbollah's involvement, first raised in 2009, inflamed sectarian tensions between Hariri's largely Sunni Muslim support base and Hezbollah's Shia Islamic backers.
Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has mounted a strident campaign to discredit the investigation, pointing to a string of espionage arrests in Lebanon, including several of technicians in mobile phone carriers, which he claims allowed Israel to manipulate call data records.
Lebanon's court of public opinion remains divided along sectarian lines about the merits of the investigation. Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, who was ousted by the Hezbollah-led opposition as prime minister in January, has insisted that Nasrallah hand over the four accused and allow a trial to be held.
He has refused to do so and Lebanese authorities could not locate the men during the month the tribunal gave them to do so after it handed over the indictment on June 30.
Saad Hariri said on Wednesday: "Today, the international justice has decided to reveal an important part of the proofs and facts related to the terrorist assassination crime, which took the life of one of the important symbols of moderation, nationalism, integrity and success in Lebanon and the Arab world.
"What is required of Hezbollah's leadership is simply to announce their disengagement with the accused."
Nasrallah is expected to make a further television address rebutting the detail in the indictment, however Hezbollah MPs in the Lebanese parliament have said privately that they believe their leader has done enough to convince supporters that the group has been the target of a conspiracy.
The content of the indictment is unlikely to satisfy those closest to Hariri who have argued ever since his death that those who ordered his killing must be investigated with the same rigour as those alleged to have carried out the plot.
The assassination took place when Hariri was at loggerheads with the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, over Assad's demand that the term of the Syrian-anointed Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, be extended.
The indictment does not address the motive for the killing.
A trial in absentia is likely to be held in The Hague later this year, or early in 2012.
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