The Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) verdict in the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has dashed hopes for calls for a serious international or independent investigation into the August 4 blast that destroyed vast swathes of the capital Beirut and killed some 200 people and wounded thousands.
This, in short, is the conclusion from the reading of the verdict in The Hague, 15 years after Hariri’s assassination, in a crime that still reverberates in Lebanon to this day. The STL ruled that Hezbollah and Syria had an interest in assassinating Hariri, but there wasn’t evidence to prove the party and Syrian leaderships were responsible for it. Indeed, it said that Hassan Nasrallah and Rafik Hariri enjoyed good relations in the months that preceded the attack.
It is natural for tribunals to operate according to tangible evidence and proofs, on which they base their verdicts. They are not concerned with answering questions surrounded the crime, such as who ordered, plotted and carried out the assassination. They are also not concerned with the local and regional circumstances that led to the crime. Their role is limited to pursuing the direct perpetrators, not countries or political parties or leaders.
Residents of the region do not need an explanation about the way decisions are made by authorities and governments in Lebanon, Syria or other countries that are involved in the assassination. The tribunal did not see the need to explain how people decide to carry out the assassination of a figure as important as Rafik Hariri, who enjoyed relations across the globe and who believed until the final moment of his life that his murder was a “red line” that no one could possibly cross. Everyone in Lebanon and Syria knows that the decision to carry out an assassination of such a scale is not taken by a security agency, no matter how powerful. Such an agency cannot find the means to execute the plan and deploy surveillance and their complicated telephones without a direct order from a higher power.
Moreover, the STL’s announcement that it did not have proof that directly tied Bashar Assad, Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei to the assassination appeared to ignore the world. Since it ignored the obvious, it should have offered an alternative mechanism over how such spectacular assassinations are carried out, significantly since it was followed by dozens of assassinations of figures, all of whom were part of the opposition against Syrian and Iranian policies.
It is not true that everyone was awaiting the verdict to come up with their stances. The “truth” was known to all the moment Captain Wissam Eid, using a normal computer, uncovered the telecommunication network that perpetrators had used. He discovered the names and party and security affiliations of these figures. Eid paid for this discovery with his life in yet another bombing whose criminals have not been found.
What was expected from this tribunal was giving some value to the concept of international justice and its fulfillment of a pledge by the international community to the Lebanese in 2005 that the criminals will not escape punishment. The exact opposite has happened: The verdict repeated facts that have already been known about the people, mobile phones and the unknown suicide bomber.
We can compare this court to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that put on trial all war criminals from all sides, reaching all the way to the top to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The STL, meanwhile, languished in mobile phone details and the number of calls that were made by each one. The former Yugoslavia tribunal was necessary for Europe, while the tribunal for Lebanon isn’t necessary for anyone.
This takes us to the present, to a crime that is greater than Hariri’s assassination with its horror, destruction and death. The August 4 Beirut blast. This explosion had a devastating impact on Beirut neighborhoods, its communities and culture. The blast is killing off everything the capital has in values and even vices. If attempts to mislead the public, hide facts and task partisan figures and state loyalists in the judiciary and security forces to come to the bottom of the catastrophe, then there will be no truth or justice. The blast will be blamed on some anonymous person or, at best, some minor expendable employees as cheap sacrifices on the altar of the murderous system.
Once again, the STL reminds the citizens of this country of the worthlessness of their lives, deaths and pain. More importantly, it reminds them that this region will remain immune to the very basic alleged universal principles of truth, justice and impunity, and above all else, the meaning of a human life. The Lebanese criminals’ escape from justice will most likely entice others to intensify their crimes and justice will remain an unfulfilled dream in our country.
