Hariri assassination: Suspects’ trial begins

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands: Nearly nine years after a truck bomb killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others, the trial started Thursday for four Hezbollah suspects accused of plotting the assassination that turned a Beirut seaside street into a “man-made hell.”
The trial opened against a backdrop of ongoing sectarian violence in Lebanon, where a car bomb exploded early Thursday in a Hezbollah stronghold close to the country’s border with Syria, killing at least three people and wounding more than 20, security officials said.
Hariri’s son, Saad — like his late father, also a former prime minister — was in the courtroom for the start of the trial along with family members of other victims of the Feb. 14, 2005, blast.
“Our presence here today is in itself proof that our stance, since the first moment, and every moment, was and will continue to be: Seeking justice, not revenge, punishment and not vengeance,” he told reporters outside court, saying it was “the time of justice for Lebanon.”
But the suspects themselves were absent as they have not been arrested. Shiite group Hezbollah denies involvement in the murder and the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has denounced the court as a conspiracy by his archenemies — the US and Israel.
Saad Hariri criticized all those who are shielding the suspects from justice, calling it “a crime added to the main crime.”
Presiding Judge David Re says prosecutors will call hundreds of witnesses in a trial likely to take months. There are fears in Lebanon that the tribunal will open a new chapter of sectarian violence.
Those fears were underscored by Thursday’s blast in the predominantly Shiite town of Hermel.
A Reuters photographer said he saw body parts strewn across the street and people with shrapnel wounds in the area of the blast, outside a building that houses local government offices. Hospitals were calling on people to give blood, he said.