Beirut, Lebanon — The death last month of a top Hezbollah
commander in Syria prompted proud eulogies from the party’s leadership,
satisfaction from his enemies – and, in a quiet suburb of The Hague, a
legal quandary. For Mustafa Badreddine was not only a veteran
Hezbollah commander who oversaw the party’s military intervention in
Syria. He is also being tried in absentia by an international tribunal
for helping to organize the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former
billionaire prime minister who was killed, along with 22 other people,
in a massive truck bombing in central Beirut.
Although Badreddine
was given a full public funeral and his body lies buried in Hezbollah’s
“martyrs” cemetery in southern Beirut, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
(STL) has concluded that his trial would continue. The Judges do not believe that sufficient evidence has yet been
presented to convince them that the death of Mr. Badreddine has been
proved,” the STL said in a statement last week.
The STL’s decision has hardened the perception among many in Lebanon
that the tribunal, which is tasked with uncovering and prosecuting Mr.
Hariri’s killers, has failed in its core mission. After 11 years and
hundreds of millions of dollars, those that ordered Hariri’s murder and
the motive behind the assassination are still unknown and the subject of
intense and conflicting speculation. The only men currently on trial
are Badreddine and four other Hezbollah men, who are alleged to have
been foot soldiers rather than architects of the assassination plot.
“[The
STL] has been beneath all expectations … it’s a case of justice
delayed, justice denied … and this idiotic rejection of the death of
Badreddine is another expression of their surreal impotence,” says
Chibli Mallat, presidential professor at the University of Utah and
author of “Philosophy of Nonviolence: Revolution, Constitutionalism, and
Justice beyond the Middle East.”
Furthermore, with more than a
quarter of a million people killed in five years of civil war in Syria
and massacres and atrocities committed across the region on a near daily
basis, the murder of one Arab politician more than a decade ago fades
into insignificance in the minds of many.
“[The STL] was set up as
the Cadillac version of justice for one person in a country where there
is no justice for so many victims and in a region where justice has
made no inroads,” says Nadim Houry, deputy director of the Middle East
and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
Tribunal initially seen as a potent force
The
STL, which is funded equally by Lebanon and the international
community, is unique compared to other international tribunals. It is
the first time that an international tribunal has recognized an act of
terrorism as an international criminal case, and the first to be
established on the basis of the murder of one man.
But though
there is no move to bring the proceedings to a premature end, the STL’s
critics doubt that it will serve as a model for tribunals in the future.
“The
STL has killed any possible future STLs because it has been so
hopelessly incompetent,” says Mr. Mallat. “Tons and tons of money are
involved in a process that is deadlocked and disheartening and nobody
takes them seriously any longer.”
It was not always this way. The
United Nations-mandated international investigation into Hariri’s murder
and the subsequent creation of the STL was initially seen as a potent
force that could disrupt the balance of power in Lebanon – and possibly
Syria – to the benefit of a Western- and Saudi-backed camp against their
Hezbollah-led opponents, who were supported by Iran and Syria. The
Syrian regime was widely suspected of ordering Hariri’s assassination.
The
tribunal’s supporters argued that Hariri’s killers had to be brought to
justice and that the era of impunity for assassinations in Lebanon must
end. Hezbollah and its allies maintained that the international
investigation was heavily politicized and intended to be used as a tool
to pressure Syria.
Indeed, if Syria had not been the main suspect,
the tribunal may never have emerged. But in 2005, Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad had earned the ire of Washington and Paris for his
domination of Lebanon and for funneling foreign jihadist fighters into
Iraq to fight US-led coalition forces. Both the US and France were
enthusiastic supporters of an international investigation in which many
believed the Syrian leader would eventually be implicated.
Slow progress
The
first progress report of the international investigation released in
October 2005 clearly pointed a finger of guilt toward the Syrian regime
and its Lebanese allies. But subsequent progress was slow.
Then in
2009, four years into the investigation, the German news magazine Der
Spiegel revealed that new evidence suggested Hezbollah members may have
played a role in the assassination. The notion that the Shiite Hezbollah
may have been responsible for killing an iconic Sunni leader
electrified Lebanon and sparked concerns that it could cause civil
strife. Hezbollah denied all responsibility and embarked on a campaign
to discredit the tribunal in the eyes of its supporters.
In August
2011, the STL issued indictments against four Hezbollah men, including
Badreddine. A fifth Hezbollah member was subsequently indicted. The
trials began in absentia in January 2014.
The basis of the
indictment lies in a complicated analysis of cellphone usage that
allegedly linked the five conspirators together. Much of the trial in
The Netherlands has comprised of lengthy technical debate over the
cellphone analysis.
“Based on what I saw [of the evidence], I was
amazed at the time that they [the prosecution] felt they could indict
them,” says a former investigator with the tribunal who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Justice for Lebanon
Still,
regardless of whether the five Hezbollah men are found guilty at the
end of the lengthy judicial process, the bigger questions of who ordered
Hariri’s assassination and why will likely remain unanswered – and
possibly never known. Although the tribunal was supposed to end the era
of unsolved political killings, more than a dozen politicians,
journalists, and security personnel working on the Hariri case were
subsequently targeted for assassination.
The implications of the
STL experience on future international tribunals is unclear. Other
tribunals currently in operation have proven successful. On June 1, an
African Union-backed tribunal in Senegal handed down a life sentence to
Hissène Habré, the former ruler of Chad, after he was found guilty of
crimes against humanity during his dictatorship in the 1980s.
But in the Middle East, the broader message of the STL experience for justice is bleak.
“It’s
another failed attempt [at international justice] which will reinforce
the cynics that [believe] there is no space for accountability in this
region,” says Mr. Houry of Human Rights Watch. “It didn’t push the
conversation forward but sank in the morass of regional politics.”
Justice
for Lebanon remains elusive, not only for the victims of the Hariri
assassination and the politically motivated killings that followed, but
also for the more than 100,000 people who perished during Lebanon’s
1975-90 civil war and the 17,000 people who disappeared without trace
during the conflict. Lebanon adopted a policy of collective amnesia in
an effort to move on after the war.
“Maybe a serious truth and
justice commission is needed for Lebanon … but that requires a
leadership in the country which is not there,” says Mallat. “What we
were hoping for is that the tribunal would provide a way out of this and
it failed … because the UN moved too slowly and without determination.”
