Table of Contents:
15 Years After an Assassination Rocked Lebanon: A Trial Ends on a Muted Note: Marlise Simons and Ben Hubbard, NYTimes, Aug. 18, 2020
There is No Role for Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Future: Opinion: Bahaa Hariri, Ya Libnan, Aug. 19, 2020
In Beirut, a Nightmare Comes to Life: Rawi Hage, Globe and Mail, Aug. 7, 2020
Lebanon: Hezbollah’s Potemkin Village: Caroline B. Glick, Newsweek, Aug. 12, 2020
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15 Years After An Assassination Rocked Lebanon, a Trial Ends on a Muted Note
Marlise Simons and Ben Hubbard
NYTimes, Aug. 18, 2020
The case went to trial in a country far from the crime scene with none of the accused in custody. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars to prosecute and employed armies of investigators, researchers and lawyers.
But when the verdict on the most consequential political assassination in Lebanon’s recent history arrived on Tuesday, it left the country without a sense of closure and failed to answer even the most basic question: Who ordered the killing?
For a huge suicide car bomb attack in Beirut in 2005 that rattled the Middle East and killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others, a United Nations-backed tribunal in the Netherlands acquitted three defendants for lack of evidence.
The fourth man, Salim Ayyash, was convicted of participating in a conspiracy to carry out the bombing. But if he is ever apprehended, the court will have to try him all over again since he was tried in absentia.
The long-awaited verdict from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was created in 2009 at the behest of the United Nations Security Council, disappointed many Lebanese and others who had hoped that an international inquiry would reveal — and punish — those responsible for the crime and break the country’s long cycle of impunity for political killings.
Although the court said that Syria and Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group, had motives to “eliminate” Mr. Hariri, it said it lacked direct evidence implicating them in the crime.
“It’s like in 9/11 if you name the hijackers and not bin Laden,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a research center based in Paris. “This was way above Ayyash’s pay grade.”
It is unlikely that Mr. Ayyash will ever be found, he said, and in any case, he was “a cog in the system,” not the attack’s mastermind.
The trial chamber is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Ayyash possessed the requisite knowledge that the explosive device was liable to create a public danger. That is also the only conclusion that is reasonably available from the evidence. The same evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt his knowledge and his intention to murder Mr. Hariri with explosive materials. The trial chamber therefore finds Mr. Ayyash guilty beyond reasonable doubt as a co-perpetrator of the intentional homicide of Mr. Rafik Hariri — the same evidence also establishes beyond reasonable doubt his knowledge and his intention to commit the intentional homicide of 21 other people, and the attempted intentional homicide of the 226 others. The act of participating in the detonation of the explosion was an act likely to cause death. In this respect, the conduct amounted to an attempted intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosive materials. Although Mr. Ayyash did not act alone, he had an important role in the operation against Mr. Hariri. The trial chamber is therefore satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the prosecution has proved the guilt of Salim Jalil Ayyash on all counts charged in the amended consolidated indictment. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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There is No Role for Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Future, Opinion
Bahaa Hariri
Ya Libnan, Aug. 19, 2020
I shouldn’t be writing this article. My father, Rafik Hariri, should be the author. As prime minister, he led Lebanon out of the chaos of civil war and rebuilt the country. But, 15 years ago, terrorists from Hezbollah — the very people who control the Port of Beirut where the Aug. 4 explosion took place — assassinated him.
The people of Lebanon are once again dealing with unimaginable loss and devastation. The tragic deaths, horrific injuries and the total destruction caused by the blast have turned the attention of the world on to my country.
As I join those demanding an independent investigation to determine not only what happened, but how it happened, there is another investigation ending. On Tuesday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon delivered the results of its years-long investigation into and prosecution of those responsible for the 2005 bombing that killed my father and 21 others.
Taken together, these events underscore the need for Lebanon to move forward without Hezbollah. In fact, Lebanon will never be able to become the nation its people need with the continued involvement of this corrupt terrorist organization.
Salim Jamil Ayyash, a member of Hezbollah, was convicted for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and 21 others and attempting murder 226 others.
In the past week since the bombing, the people of Lebanon have risen up and are speaking with one voice. They are demanding change. They are calling out the current failing and compromised political system, railing against warlords and corrupt elites, government inertia and the system that supports all of them. They are also calling for an end to the role Hezbollah has played in governing parts of Beirut and Lebanon. Terrorist organizations and warlords cannot build countries — they only know how to tear them down.
The death of Rafik Hariri is to many Lebanese what the JFK assassination was to Americans four decades earlier — everybody remembers what they were doing when the news broke. On Valentine’s Day 2005, the former prime minister who embodied the reconstruction of the country after its 1975-1990 civil war was killed in a monster bomb attack on his convoy. ON Aug 18 one of four Hezbollah suspects accused of murdering Hariri has been convicted by a special UN-backed court STL. I firmly believe this is the best route ahead if the country is to move forward with confidence and conviction to rebuild itself into a modern nation. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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In Beirut, a Nightmare Comes to Life
Rawi Hage
Globe and Mail, Aug. 7, 2020
For 30 years, Lebanon’s kleptocratic leaders have deprived its population of electricity, water and even a minimal social welfare net. With a sense of complete arrogance and entitlement, these sectarian oligarchical politicians – a small collection of incompetents; corrupt, failed bureaucrats; and agents for one external force or another – are still manoeuvring to hold on to the power against the millions that demand their resignations in daily protests.
For 30 years, these old oligarchs, under cover of sectarianism, have managed to suppress and pillage what once was a valued model of permissibility and multiplicity in the region. Moreover, now the dire consequence of these years of negligence, corruption and petty bickering is a blast on the scale of a nuclear explosion that has devastated my birthplace, Beirut.
Regardless of the intended use of these explosives, whether the thousands of kilos of ammonium nitrate was intended as a potential weapon in a complex geopolitical configuration, or stored against repeated warnings and advice as a consequence of the failed governance of a failed state, the result is one of criminality, devastation and a deep psychological, cultural and physical wound.
The devastated area is my childhood neighbourhood. Now its streets are carpeted with fragments of glass that once gave some dignity and shelter to its inhabitants. It is also a setting for many of my novels. Down the French stairs of Gemayzeh district, what remains of old Beirut with its distinct Lebanese architecture, a fusion between Ottoman and Venetian styles, is all destroyed. The unique façade that tells of the rich historicity, complexity and multiplicity of the place is now defenceless against the pariahs, the corrupt developers and the governmental officials, who are wetting their lips and sharpening their curved swords to tear down the last glimpses of past history.
It’s precisely that model of an organic architectural blend that many Lebanese celebrate and take pride in. All this seems to be gone now, as does all that seems to be symbolic of the poetic in the grand schema of the perpetual disasters that this place has suffered. The spectre of a Hezbollah-Israeli war; the hyperinflation; a deeply corrupt power that holds the state and its increasingly impoverished inhabitants hostage; a proxy army acting in the service of one foreign nation or another; the threats of various invasions; and the harmful pollution and related environmental distractions are certainly priorities to highlight, requiring sophisticated political engagement, but what is fundamentally at risk here is the death of a precious kindle, any hope for a renewal of the fire of an enlightenment once lost. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Lebanon: Hezbollah’s Potemkin Village
Caroline B. Glick
Newsweek, Aug. 12, 2020
Two days after the port of Beirut was destroyed last Tuesday, the first of three U.S. military C-130 cargo planes arrived in the devastated city. U.S. relief from the three shipments is valued at $17 million.
U.S. commander of Central Command (Centcom), Marine General Frank McKenzie, called the chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Gen. Joseph Aoun and expressed “U.S. willingness to continue to work with the LAF to help provide aid and assistance to meet the needs of the Lebanese people during this terrible tragedy.”
If Lebanon were a normal country, McKenzie’s statement would make sense. But it isn’t. And as the circumstances surrounding the destruction last Tuesday of the port in Beirut—and much of the surrounding 10 miles of the city—demonstrate, Lebanon is not really a country at all. Its national institutions and leaders are not actually national institutions and leaders. The best way to describe them is as front companies and front men for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has long been the most powerful military force in Lebanon. And in 2008, Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese legion, seized control of the country in a coup. Ever since, nothing has happened in Lebanon without Hezbollah’s permission.
Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon isn’t a secret. In 2018, Hezbollah’s political bloc won an absolute majority of seats in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections. Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab—who resigned along with his government, on Monday—was hand-chosen by Hezbollah for the post. President Michel Aoun, too.
International “experts” have long downplayed the significance of Hezbollah’s control of the country. True, they acknowledge, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization with one of the largest missile arsenals in the world. True, the LAF operates in support of Hezbollah and has never challenged it on anything. But, it is argued in places like the Pentagon and the French Foreign Ministry, Lebanon is a state. The government is elected. It makes decisions beyond Hezbollah—and its arsenal of well over 200,000 missiles pointed at Israel from launchers located in private homes and schools throughout the country.
Aside from that, supporters of continued aid to the LAF argue, LAF forces cooperate with Centcom. They train with U.S. soldiers. If given sufficient arms and training, maybe one day they will challenge Hezbollah—or better yet, make it disappear in a poof.
All of these fantasies, which have informed U.S. Lebanon policy since 2006, went up in the mushroom cloud over the port of Beirut last week. Those explosions showed that despite its national trappings, Lebanon’s government and national institutions are fronts… [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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