Hizbollah operative sentenced to five life terms over assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister

Hariri was assassinated in 2005

Credit: Mike Nelson/EPA

Fugitive Hizbollah member, Salim Ayyash, was sentenced to five concurrent terms of life imprisonment in absentia on Friday over his involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri.

The UN-backed tribunal had convicted 57-year-old Ayyash in August, 15 years after the incident, as a co-perpetrator of the suicide truck bombing in downtown Beirut that killed Mr Hariri and 21 other people.

The Valentine’s Day assassination in 2005 sent shockwaves throughout the Middle East and launched Lebanon into its biggest period of instability since the 1975-1990 civil war.

“Mr. Ayyash participated in an act of terrorism that caused mass murder. His role … was vital to the success of the attack,” Presiding Judge David Re said on Friday.

The three other Hizbollah members on trial had been acquitted of all charges in a verdict which was announced in August, due to a lack of evidence. None of the low-level operatives on trial has ever been arrested and their whereabouts remain unknown.

Mr Hariri, a billionaire Sunni businessman had served five terms as Lebanon’s Prime Minister and was looking to end Syria’s almost 30-year occupation of Lebanon. He was also known to dislike Hizbollah’s close ties to Syria and Iran.

The court did not find any evidence of Hizbollah’s leadership or Syria being involved in the attack — a verdict met with widespread disbelief and disappointment, but little surprise across Lebanon, as they reeled from another explosion this summer to which there has been little high-level accountability.

Though on Friday, one of the trial judges, Janet Nosworthy, said the assassination “most probably had to have involved a state actor” and that the state “with most to gain from Mr. Hariri’s elimination most likely was Syria.”

“In my view, a strong inference is available from the above as to who has been shielding him from justice for all of these years,” Mr Re said, in a reference to previous Hizbollah statements that have warned against any attempts to arrest the suspects in the trial.

The court issued a fresh arrest warrant for Mr Ayyash and established an Interpol Red Notice.