EFFORTPOST [Effortpost] The fiasco of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, an attempt to actually prosecute assassins

This is the story of how the international community came together to finally end the impunity of assassins in Lebanon and completely failed. It's very convoluted and the wikipedia page sucks so much of this comes from memory. Please forgive me if some of the details are wrong.

Assassination became common in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 period of civil wars. I mean really common. Most of the important leaders in that era did not die of natural causes. There were no investigations because law and order had completely broken down. There was no reason to anyway as suspects could just flee to another faction's territory in a matter of minutes. With the end of the war, assassinations largely ceased. But in 2005 a shocking event opened the floodgates again.

Bombing

Rafik Hariri, leader of the Future Movement, killed February 14, 2005

A 1 ton car bomb in the business district of Beirut killed the prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and 21 bystanders. The police responded immediately. Knowing how important it is to keep the city clean, they towed away all the cars and had a bulldozer sweep the area, wiping away much of the evidence. But immediately everyone knew that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was responsible.

How could they be so sure? It's really pretty easy. Just like a gangland hit, in Lebanon the victim usually has a beef with someone in the days leading up to it. It's possible that a third party took advantage of this, killing the victim to frame the obvious suspect. (Israel is known to have done this effectively to get rival Palestinian factions to fight each other.) But in most cases, it really is the most obvious suspect. After all, they aren't going to be prosecuted so who cares if everyone knows they're guilty?

The Corniche in better times.

Assad had the obvious motive here. At the time, Lebanon was effectively a protectorate of Syria. The Lebanese had their own government but the presence of Syrian troops and intelligence officers was always looming in the background. Lebanon's own security services were more loyal to Assad than their own country. It had been this way since a Syrian invasion in 1990 crushed the militias and a peace agreement was forged between the warring factions.

One of the chief architects of that agreement was Rafik Hariri, a billionaire who had spent much of his life in Saudi Arabia and made his fortune there. He rose to prominence politically as he got along reasonably well with all factions, had the cash to pay bribes, and had very close ties to the Saudi royal family. His company Solidere was rebuilding parts of Beirut that were destroyed in the war. By 2005 he was prime minister, the highest office reserved for Sunnis.

But trouble was brewing. The regional situation had changed greatly since 1990. With the US invasion of Iraq, tensions between the Sunnis/Saudis and Shi'a/Iranians had reached the boiling point. Lebanon was sure to become a pawn in their game of proxy wars. The president's term was about to expire and Assad wanted it extended. Hariri and others like the Druze leader Walid Joumblatt joined in opposition to this. Shortly before his death, they visited Damascus where Assad allegedly just straight up told Hariri to his face to do it or get blown up.

Kamal Joumblatt, shot by SSNP thugs working for Assad, March 16, 1977

With Assad's guilt so obvious, you might expect the public to be outraged, and many were. Mass protests and international pressure forced Syria to pull its troops out a few months later. But many had been glad to be under Syrian occupation. At least they had ended the war and they had helped Hezbollah in its long struggle to drive out the Israelis. Pro-Syrian factions held power in the parliament and especially the security services, whose directors were chosen by Assad. The people who theoretically should be tracking down Hariri's killers were not just apathetic, they had likely been involved in the plot themselves.

Bashir Gemayel, blown up by SSNP thugs working for Assad, September 14, 1982.

Investigation

However, blowing up a prime minister was too much for the rest of the world to swallow. The UN Security Council sent a team led by German judge Detlev Mehlis to carry out an impartial investigation. All kinds of drama took place. The directors of the security services and military intelligence were arrested. There was a fake claim of responsibility supposedly by Sunni extremists. Top Syrian official Ghazi Kanaan had been the unofficial viceroy controlling Lebanon for many years. He called a Lebanese radio station and made a rambling statement hinting that he was going to be made a scapegoat and then shot himself. Witnesses came forward with detailed knowledge of the plot and then recanted or were discredited.

Mehlis released an initial report several months later. It implicated top officials in Syria and Lebanon's security services. But there was no smoking gun proving the guilt of an individual person. The best evidence found was records showing that 6 burner phones were often on the routes taken by Hariri, were only used in the weeks leading up to the bombing, and only called each other. These were certainly members of the plot, but their identities were a mystery.

Meanwhile more assassinations were taking place. Every few months a prominent anti-Syria politician or journ*list was blown up. There was no mystery about who was doing these. A pro-Syria TV reporter was caught on a hot mike joking about how many more MPs had to be killed before their side gained the majority. Awkward!

May Chidiac, journ*list, lost an arm and a leg, September 25, 2005

The STL

The investigation continued for years but made little progress. Finally in 2009 the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was set up to bring the conspirators to justice. If it worked in Yugoslavia it must work here, right? Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare would now lead the investigation. He looked over the work his predecessors had done and then decided they were wrong and threw out most of the conclusions they had reached. He even released the 4 security service heads who had been detained for lack of evidence.

Actual footage of me when Bellemare took over.

Bellemare had his own theory: the bombing had actually been done by Hezbollah, not Syria. This caused some immediate head-scratching. Hezbollah was a close ally of the Assad regime and cooperated closely with it. How could they carry out this complex plot behind the Syrians' backs? And why? Hezbollah didn't have any particular grudge against Hariri. Their only possible motive would be to do it as a favor to Assad, but why wouldn't the Syrians just do it themselves?

Zoomers, believe it or not, you could actually organize a complex assassination plot before smart phones.

Bellemare said he had evidence though. Remember those burner phones that we know were used by the conspirators? That's the "red network" Bellemare looked at other phones that were near red network phones, hoping to find someone who was also carrying another phone. He used this technique to find another network of phones that mostly talked to each other. Then he linked that network to another network and so on until there's 5 networks and you reach phones known to belong to Hezbollah members. Even this evidence became suspect when a phone company employee with access to the records was caught spying for Israel.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah

Then Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah dropped a bombshell. In 1997 an Israeli naval commando team was ambushed and wiped out on a mission to capture a Hezbollah leader. At the time it was assumed that they had been lured in by intelligence from a double agent. Now Nasrallah revealed that they had been tapping into the video feed from Israeli drones for over a decade. They had noticed the drones paying close attention to certain route and realized they were doing recon before a raid. He played that footage and then showed more of the site of the Hariri assassination in the weeks leading up to it.

Bellemare continued investigating at a leisurely pace. He got into numerous slapfights with the judges and had much of his staff mysteriously resign. Finally in 2011 he issued an indictment of 5 Hezbollah members, only one of whom, Mustafa Badreddine, was of any importance. They laughed and went on with their lives knowing that nobody would try to arrest them. So the tribunal tried them in absentia. Badreddine was assassinated during the trial, leaving only 4 nobodies but the STL somehow managed to take 9 years to reach a verdict. One was convicted and the rest acquitted for lack of evidence.

George Hawi, former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, killed June 21, 2005

The STL was also supposed to be investigating the other assassinations that followed Hariri's, but by now it's international backers had had enough. The investigation into Hariri's death had spent 15 years and $1 billion to achieve nothing. Funding was cut off and it finally shut down in 2022.

The Truth

So who really killed Hariri?

Hezbollah is the least likely. There just isn't any reason why Syria would involve them instead of simply doing it themselves. The supposed phone networks is the only evidence against them and that's a house of cards. I believe they were really accused because it was clear that Assad could never be brought to justice but it might be possible to at least hurt his allies in Lebanon. But that's speculation.

Israel is no more likely. They gained the most from Hariri's death as it ultimately led to Syria being ejected from Lebanon, but that couldn't have been anticipated. It would also be an enormous risk as if they got caught the Saudis would never forgive them. Nasrallah's drone recording is no more darning then Bellemare's phone records. The Israelis have a million reasons to observe that part of Beirut.

So we're back to Mehlis' initial conclusion. The bombing was almost certainly carried out by Syrian operatives and members of the Lebanese security services. The Assad regime loves blowing people up and we know they were responsible for other bombings. The best evidence against them is when Christian politician Michel Samaha was caught with explosives in his trunk driving home from Damascus. If they got caught red-handed plotting one bombing, it's safe to assume they did more. It also supports my belief that the Syrians used Lebanese under their direct control instead of asking Hezbollah to do it for them.

As for the individual people who carried it out, I doubt we'll ever know.

Legacy

Saad Hariri, legendary frickup.

Rafik Hariri 's son Saad was his successor. It quickly became apparent that he lacked the charisma, intelligence, and courage needed to lead and support for his party dwindled. He has been prime minister on and off since then. His close ties to the Saudi royal family became a liability after MBS's coup there. On a state visit in 2017 the new Saudi regime just straight up kidnapped him, holding him for several days and forcing him to announce his resignation. He quit politics in 2022 to focus on spending millions of dollars on hookers. He was last seen in the news being accused of r*pe by a flight attendant.

The Beirut Holiday Inn, burned out in the War of the Hotels in 1976.

Hariri's company Solidere did some construction around the Beirut port. The burned out ruin of the Holiday Inn was finally torn down after decades. But Solidere turned out to be mostly a scam. The city was devastated again by the massive ammonium nitrate explosion at the port.

Bashar al-Assad continued to blow people up for several years. In 2012 a car bomb killed Wissam al-Hassan, head of the Internal Security Force's intelligence branch. He had originated the theory that Hezbollah had killed Hariri. Eventually the bombing wave ended, probably because civil war had broken out in Syria and Assad's regime was too busy trying to survive to care about Lebanon.

Michel Samaha spent 10 years in prison and was released in 2022. He appears to be the only person actually convicted of a crime and punished for it in this entire story.

Observations

The STL was politicized and incompetent, but that's not why it failed. It was doomed from the start. Ending the impunity for killers may be a noble goal, but it will take more than lawyers and condescending finger-wagging to achieve. The Lebanese did not end up in this situation because they're ignorant and need to be taught how civilized Europeans behave. It's the meddling foreign powers that are ignorant of certain realities in the country:

• You can't trust the police to do the most basic tasks. They may even be the killers themselves.

• The government in general is plagued by nepotism, corruption, incompetence, and laziness so it takes forever to get anything done.

• Large parts of the population don't mind if their political opponents are killed. The other side doesn't care when we get killed so why should we care about them?

• There are so many players who could possibly have the motive and means to carry out a hit that there will always be a reasonable doubt.

• Suspects can find sanctuary in their faction"s territory. That may be as easy as going across town.

• The masterminds often aren't even in Lebanon, so there's no way to hold them accountable short of war.

The Lebanese have learned the hard way that the only accountability they will ever get is through violent retaliation. That doesn't make stupid or bad people. They're just stuck in a terrible situation.