THE HAGUE: The Hezbollah defendants are still on the run and have never even spoken to their lawyers, but the special UN tribunal into the 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri starts its final phase this week.
Thirteen years after billionaire Hariri was killed by a huge suicide bomb in Beirut, the court in a suburb of The Hague will hear closing prosecution and defense arguments in the long-running case.
Four suspected members of the militant group Hezbollah are on trial at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) over the shock attack, which also killed 21 other people and injured 226.
Hezbollah has refused to turn over the four indicted men — Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi, Assad Sabra and Hassan Habib Merhi — for the trial which began in January 2014.
But the tribunal is unique in international justice as it can try suspects in absentia, as well as for its ability to try accused perpetrators of an individual terrorist attack.
It is the first time a trial has happened without the suspects in the dock since 1945, when an international criminal jurisdiction was created for the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
Closing arguments are due to run from Tuesday until September 21.
“It’s problematic, because for the general public it is always bitter when you can’t put a face to violence,” said Thijs Bouwknegt, a lawyer specializing in international criminal law.
“A court without defendants risks being a joke.”
The assassination of Hariri, who was Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim prime minister until his resignation in October 2004, was a pivotal moment in the country’s history.
Fingers quickly pointed at Syria after the bomber detonated a van packed with tons of explosives next to his armored convoy on the Beirut seafront on Valentine’s Day in 2005.
The bombing triggered a wave of mass demonstrations that ended with the departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon after a 30-year presence, after which Hariri’s son Saad became premier.
But when the tribunal, which was set up in 2009, eventually handed down indictments it named four alleged members of Hezbollah, which although backed by Iran and Syria, is Lebanese-based.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has previously dismissed the tribunal as a US-Israeli plot and vowed none of the defendants will ever be caught.
None of them has ever had contact with their court-appointed defense lawyers.
Dov Jacobs, a professor of international law, said the tribunal risked being “exclusively symbolic.”
“The absence of the accused is quite significant in my view, because it puts in question the relevance of conducting a criminal trial in such circumstances, given that there will be no actual punishment meted out,” he added.
The tribunal quashed a case against the alleged mastermind, Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine, who is believed to have died while fighting in Syria in May 2016.
Of the remaining four, Ayyash, 50, is accused of leading the team that carried out the attack, while Oneissi, 44, and Sabra, 41, allegedly sent a fake video to the Al-Jazeera news channel claiming responsibility on behalf of a made-up group.
The final suspect, Merhi, 52, was indicted later and his case joined to the current trial.
The court earlier this year threw out a bid by Oneissi to be acquitted, saying that while much of the evidence was circumstantial it was still in theory sufficient to produce conviction.
Much of the prosecution case relies on mobile phone records that allegedly show them conducting surveillance of Hariri until minutes before the explosion.
The defense has said the evidence is “theoretical” and that the defendants had “no motive” to carry out the crime.
Absent defendants or not, the tribunal will bring much needed closure for the relatives of the victims, argued Bouwknegt.
“This tribunal is the only one that is ruling on a terrorist crime — that in itself is unique and fascinating,” he said.
Judges will not hand down a verdict until a later date, while any appeal could take even longer.
Hariri suspects absent as Lebanon tribunal nears climax
Hariri suspects absent as Lebanon tribunal nears climax
- Thirteen years after billionaire Hariri was killed by a huge suicide bomb in Beirut, the court in a suburb of The Hague will hear closing prosecution and defense arguments in the long-running case
- Four suspected members of the militant group Hezbollah are on trial at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Alexandria bids farewell to historic tram in latest urban upheaval
- For over 160 years, the tram has cut through Alexandria’s heart, in an 11-kilometer stretch that includes many of the city’s schools and main universities
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt: Along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, the oldest tram in Africa and the Middle East rumbles for a final few weeks before its removal — the latest urban upheaval Alexandrians say is hollowing out their city’s identity.
Government plans to replace the colorful streetcars on one of the city’s routes with a partially elevated light rail line have angered Alexandrians, for whom the 163-year-old track is “heritage, not just a means of transport,” local urban researcher Nahla Saleh told AFP.
Inaugurated in 1863, the tram is one of the world’s oldest, and among only a few to operate double-decker cars.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, it helped the city become a bustling metropolis, home to sizable European diasporas and a distinct cosmopolitan culture.
Now, Egyptians young and old have flocked for farewell rides, before the streetcars come to a halt in April.
As one locomotive screeches into the old El-Raml Station, commuters and visitors crane their necks out of giant windows at the historic neo-Venetian buildings overhead.
“We’re not against progress,” psychologist and writer on culture Mona Lamloum told AFP.
She and other Alexandrians agree the tramway needs work: inside the hand-calligraphied blue exterior, grime covers every surface. Underfoot, the rubber flooring is torn and strewn with trash.
“We just have bad experiences of everything they call ‘progress’ becoming synonymous with destruction,” Lamloum said.
In recent years, development projects in Egypt’s second city have razed historic parks and — most egregiously to locals — privatised and obstructed much of its Mediterranean coastline.
- Heart of Alexandria -
For over 160 years, the tram has cut through Alexandria’s heart, in an 11-kilometer stretch that includes many of the city’s schools and main universities.
The new project, led by Egyptian and international companies including Systra, Hyundai and Hitachi, promises to double speed and triple capacity.
Over half of it will be elevated — a major concern for Alexandrians who fear the tree-lined track will be replaced by eyesore concrete stilts.
Ahead of the first phase of suspension, the transport ministry said the new project was the “only solution to the city’s traffic problems.”
Locals like Saleh and Lamloum disagree, saying government plans are making the city more car-dependent and worsening traffic.
Already, because so many students rely on the tram, the city has staggered school and university hours to pick up the slack of the partial shutdown.
“Traffic’s getting worse, people can’t get anywhere, when we’ve already lost the inner-city train,” said Saleh, referring to another project under construction for the past two years, the new Alexandria Metro Line.
“Besides, it being slow was always an advantage,” she added, making it safe for “the most vulnerable in society: children and the elderly.”
Retired science teacher Hisham Abdelwahab, 64, has been riding the tram since he was a child.
“I don’t want it to go fast, I like watching the world go by,” he told AFP on a station bench.
“Our parents never thought twice about sending us out on the tram alone. Now I have a car, I just like leaving it parked to come ride the tram.”
When the next streetcar rolls in, the upper deck fills with a gaggle of schoolgirls, squabbling over who gets the window seat closest to the sea breeze.
- The old tram and the sea -
“This tram is our heritage,” Abdelwahab said, his sentiment shared by those several decades younger.
Engineering student Mahmoud Bassam, 24, has visited Alexandria just to ride the streetcar “since our tram in Cairo was removed,” he told AFP.
With a controversial slew of bridges and widened streets completed in 2020, Cairo’s historic Heliopolis neighborhood lost its last tram tracks, along with many of its trees.
“Now the same is happening here,” Bassam lamented.
Many Alexandrians are feeling the loss, intermingled with their other most treasured heritage.
“It’s like the sea. We used to go for long scenic drives on the corniche, but now we’re losing both the sea and the tram,” Abdelwahab said.
Parallel to the tramway, much of Alexandria’s iconic corniche is now hidden behind overpasses, private businesses and beachside food courts.
By 2024, over half of the city’s Mediterranean coastline had disappeared from view, according to a study by the Human and the City for Social Research center.
Four-lane highways now dominate long stretches of the seaside, where the landmark sight of fishermen perched over the waves grows ever-rarer.
For many, the waterfront that Lebanese singer Fairouz immortalized in 1961 — crooning about “the coast of Alexandria, coast of love” — is no more.
“Now all you see is concrete,” said Lamloum.
Saleh calls it “short-sighted” that the city could lose its charm to sprawling concrete.
“Tourists used to love coming to see the tram and sit by the sea, why take away both?“
