Hariri verdict builds case for Hezbollah’s accountability

The killing of Hariri, who had close ties with the West and Arab Gulf states, was a seismic event in the region’s history. (AFP)
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Updated 19 August 2020
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Hariri verdict builds case for Hezbollah’s accountability

  • Killing of Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2005, was a seismic event in the region’s history
  • Many supporters likely disappointed by court’s failure to provide answers to key questions

DUBAI: The verdict comes at a difficult moment even by Lebanon’s standards, barely two weeks after a blast left nearly half of the capital Beirut destroyed or damaged. Public outrage forced the government to step down, leaving the country rudderless amid a deepening economic and financial crisis compounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

Nevertheless, more than 15 years after the killing of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on Valentine’s Day in 2005, justice has finally prevailed with a UN-backed court declaring a member of Lebanon’s Iran-aligned Hezbollah guilty as a co-conspirator of five charges linked to his involvement in the deadly truck bombing.

All four suspects — Hezbollah members Salim Jamil Ayyash, 56; Assad Hassan Sabra, 43; Hussein Hassan Onaisi, 46; and Hassan Habib Merhi, 54 — had gone on trial on Jan. 16, 2014, at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon First Instance Court. Tried in absentia, Ayyash was convicted by the STL on Tuesday while the other three were acquitted. Sentencing will be carried out later.




A UN-backed court decalred a member of Lebanon’s Iran-aligned Hezbollah guilty as a co-conspirator of five charges linked to his involvement in the deadly truck bombing.

The attack took place five months after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1559 in 2004, calling for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

The killing of Hariri, who had close ties with the West and Arab Gulf states, was a seismic event in the region’s history, and suspicions fell immediately on Syria, which at that time dominated Lebanon, and Hezbollah.

Only time will tell whether the 2,600-page ruling has closed the chapter on one of the most painful periods in recent Lebanese history. Many admirers of Hariri will be disappointed by the STL’s failure to provide answers to key questions, including the motives behind the assassination and the identity of the person who was in the explosives-filled truck that was detonated to strike Hariri’s motorcade.




The attack took place five months after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1559 in 2004, calling for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

A fifth man, Mustafa Amin Badr Al-Din, was dropped from the indictment after he was killed in Syria in 2016. Prosecutors had described Badr Al-Din, the commander of Hezbollah's military wing, as "overall controller of the operation" to assassinate Hariri.

“Unfortunately, the STL has let the Lebanese people down for 15 years now. Many people were killed and there was a lot of occasions for the tribunal to step up and prevent further killings, but it didn’t do what it was required to do,” Chibli Mallat, an international lawyer and law professor, told Arab News from Beirut.




Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was killed on Valentine’s Day in 2005. 

“As a criminal lawyer and a friend of so many of the victims’ families, I am calling for the immediate handover by Hezbollah of Mr. Ayyash,” he said. “If that does not happen, I am urging the judicial apparatus in Lebanon to search and arrest Mr. Ayyash and deliver him to the tribunal.

“Second, because of the insufficiency of the tribunal and in doing what it was expected to do, I am calling on the families of the victims to appeal in particular on the point of the grave error in law, in what we heard in the tribunal.”

Presiding Judge David Re said that while the leadership of Hezbollah or the Syrian government may have had motives to eliminate Hariri and his political allies, the STL found no evidence of their involvement in the 2005 attack. But Mallat argues that there is no such separation in criminal law “anywhere in the world.”

“Mr. Re and the tribunal are using a wrong argument to explain why the leadership of Hezbollah and the Syrian government may not have played a part in the assassination,” he told Arab News.

“So the actual verdict now serves both camps,” Heiko Wimmen, Project Director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon at the International Crisis Group, told Arab News in a written reaction.

Those who are against Hezbollah “may point to the fact that the person who was sentenced still is a Hezbollah operative who could not possibly have acted on his own, even if the evidence was not sufficient to convict others,” he said.




Hezbollah members Salim Jamil Ayyash, 56; Assad Hassan Sabra, 43; Hussein Hassan Onaisi, 46; and Hassan Habib Merhi, 54

On the other hand, “Hezbollah supporters can say that after 10-plus years and despite endless efforts by Western and Israeli intelligence efforts, this tribunal was barely able to concoct enough flawed evidence to sentence one of its members, which suggests that really the whole story was created out of thin air.”

Looking to the future, Wimmen said: “I would not expect Hezbollah to view the acquittal of the other three accused as evidence of a fair trial, or the verdict to change for the better its disposition towards an international investigation into the August 4 Beirut explosions.”




We will not rest until the punishment is carried out, said Rafic Hariri’s son Saad. 

Rafic Hariri’s son Saad, who after his father’s assassination also served as Lebanon’s prime minister, said he accepted the STL’s verdict, adding that it showed that Hezbollah was responsible.

“Today, the party that should make sacrifices is Hezbollah,” he said, after attending the STL session. “It is clear that the network responsible is from its ranks. We will not rest until the punishment is carried out.”

Saad said he had expected more information to emerge from the trial. "I think everybody's expectation was much higher than what came out, but I believe that the tribunal came out with a result that is satisfying," he said.

Another son, Bahaa, said the decision confirmed that the assassination was a “political act undertaken by those whose activities my father was threatening, after he had decided that Syria must leave our country.”

Bahaa said: “The court was clear about the political background of those involved and other players with motive, local operational capability and experience of this kind of action.”

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Twitter: @jumanaaltamimi


UN records 613 killings in Gaza near humanitarian convoys or aid distribution points run by US group

Updated 41 min 29 sec ago
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UN records 613 killings in Gaza near humanitarian convoys or aid distribution points run by US group

  • Deaths near aid points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near humanitarian convoys

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: The UN human rights office said Friday it has recorded 613 killings in Gaza near humanitarian convoys and at aid distribution points run by an Israeli-backed American organization since it first began operations in late May.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the rights office was not able to attribute responsibility for the killings. But she said “it is clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points” operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

She said it was not immediately clear how many of those killings had taken place at GHF sites, and how many occurred near convoys.

Speaking to reporters at a regular briefing, Shamdasani said the figures covered the period from May 27 through June 27, and “there have been further incidents” since then. She said she was basing the information on an internal situation report at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Shamdasani said the figures, compiled through its standard vetting processes, were not likely to tell a complete picture, and “we will perhaps never be able to grasp the full scale of what’s happening here because of the lack of access” for UN teams to the areas.


Israeli military prepares plan to ensure Iran cannot threaten country, defense minister says

Updated 04 July 2025
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Israeli military prepares plan to ensure Iran cannot threaten country, defense minister says

  • Longtime enemies engaged in 12-day air war in June
  • Israel and Iran agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire on June 24

DUBAI: The Israeli military is preparing an enforcement plan to “ensure that Iran cannot return to threaten Israel,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told senior military officials.

He said the military must be prepared, both in intelligence and operations, to ensure Israel has air superiority and to prevent Tehran from reestablishing its previous capabilities.

He made his remarks following a 12-day air war between the longtime enemies in June, during which Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities, saying the aim was to prevent Tehran developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies seeking nuclear arms and that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

Israel and Iran agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire that ended hostilities on June 24.


Trump expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on ‘final’ Gaza peace proposal

Updated 04 July 2025
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Trump expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on ‘final’ Gaza peace proposal

  • Israel has earlier agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday it would probably be known in 24 hours whether the Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to accept what he has called a “final proposal” for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza.

The president also said he had spoken to Saudi Arabia about expanding the Abraham Accords, the deal on normalization of ties that his administration negotiated between Israel and some Gulf countries during his first term.

Trump said on Tuesday Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalize a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.

He was asked on Friday if Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework, and said: “We’ll see what happens, we are going to know over the next 24 hours.”

A source close to Hamas said on Thursday the Islamist group sought guarantees that the new US-backed ceasefire proposal would lead to the end of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Two Israeli officials said those details were still being worked out. Dozens of Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza authorities.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.

Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed over 56,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza’s entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.

A previous two month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18. Trump earlier this year proposed a US takeover of Gaza, which was condemned globally by rights experts, the UN and Palestinians as a proposal of “ethnic cleansing.”

Abraham Accords

Trump made the comments on the Abraham Accords when asked about US media reporting late on Thursday that he had met Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman at the White House.

“It’s one of the things we talked about,” Trump said. “I think a lot of people are going to be joining the Abraham accords,” he added, citing the predicted expansion to the damage faced by Iran from recent US and Israeli strikes.

Axios reported that after the meeting with Trump, the Saudi official spoke on the phone with Abdolrahim Mousavi, chief of Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces.

Trump’s meeting with the Saudi official came ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

Updated 04 July 2025
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Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

  • Medical charity warns of new threat from escalation in fighting in Sudan civil war

KHARTOUM: Civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan face mass atrocities and ethnic violence in the civil war between the regular army and its paramilitary rivals, the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to consolidate their power in Darfur since losing control of the capital Khartoum in March. Their predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago.

The paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state which they have besieged since May 2024 in an effort to push the army out of its final stronghold in the region.
“People are not only caught in indiscriminate heavy fighting ... but also actively targeted by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies, notably on the basis of their ethnicity,” said Michel-Olivier Lacharite, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ head of emergencies. There were “threats of a full-blown assault,” on El-Fasher, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people largely cut off from food and water supplies and deprived of access to medical care, he said.


Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

Updated 04 July 2025
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Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia moved on Thursday to reassure Egypt about its water supply after completing work on a controversial giant $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile.

“To our neighbors downstream, our message is clear: the dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said.

“The energy and development it will generate stand to uplift not just Ethiopia. We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water. Prosperity for one should mean prosperity for all.”

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is 1.8 km wide and 145 meters high, and is Africa's largest hydroelectric project. It can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water and generate more than 5,000 megawatts of power — more than double Ethiopia’s current output. It will begin full operations in September.

Egypt already suffers from severe water scarcity and sees the dam as an existential threat because the country relies on the Nile for 97 percent of its water. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met last week and “stressed their rejection of any unilateral measures in the Blue Nile basin.” They were committed to safeguarding water security in the region, Sisi’s spokesman said.