Rafik Hariri tribunal: Guilty verdict over assassination of Lebanon ex-PM

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

1 hour ago

A UN-backed court has found a member of the militant group Hezbollah guilty of involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.

Judges at the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon said Salim Ayyash had a central role in the bomb attack in Beirut in 2005 that killed Hariri.

They acquitted three other defendants, who like Ayyash were tried in absentia.

Hezbollah denied any involvement, and the judges said no evidence implicated the Shia militant group's leaders.

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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53601710

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The blast near Beirut's seafront killed Hariri and 21 other people (Getty Images)


Source: The Guardian

Hezbollah member found guilty over killing of Rafik Hariri

Verdict on 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM exonerates two other members

Martin Chulov in Beirut

Tue 18 Aug 2020 15.37 BST
First published on Tue 18 Aug 2020 15.16 BST

A senior member of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been convicted of helping orchestrate the 2005 assassination of the country’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri, after a five-year international trial in the Hague.

The judges exonerated two other members of the organisation and ruled they had found no links to Hezbollah’s leadership. The verdicts were met with surprise in Beirut, where supporters of Hezbollah were expecting all three named members to be convicted.

Opponents of the group decried the result as an “enormous disappointment” and claimed the UN-funded special tribunal for Lebanon had failed to get to the bottom of a plot that, until the catastrophic explosion on 4 August, had been the biggest and most consequential event to rock Lebanon since its modern state was founded in 1943.

The tribunal found Salim Ayyash had led the operation to kill Hariri with a giant car bomb on the Beirut waterfront. It said there was insufficient evidence to link Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra to a charge of delivering a false claim of responsibility to a broadcaster.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/hezbollah-member-found-guilty-over-killing-rafik-hariri-lebanon