Lebanon: Rafic Hariri killer receives 5 life sentences

The man who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri has today been handed five concurrent life sentences for the crime.

Salim Jamil Ayyash, 57, was tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia for the 2005 assassination of Hariri and the killing of 21 other people.

Chief Judge David Re told the court: “Mr Ayyash participated in an act of terrorism that caused mass murder.”

“In the circumstances, the trial chamber is satisfied that it should impose the maximum sentence for each of the five crimes of life imprisonment to be served concurrently.”

Ayyash was found guilty of five offences, including conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, committing a terrorist act using an explosive device, the “intentional homicide” of Hariri and 21 other people, and attempted homicide of those injured in the attack, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

Prosecutors termed the sentences the “only just and proportionate sentence” for Ayyash, given it was the “most serious terrorist attack that has occurred on Lebanese soil”, the report added.

The 57-year-old, alongside three other defendants, was tried by the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which gave its verdict on 18 August.

READ: Lebanon’s central bank tells banks to pay students abroad

None of the four defendants, including Ayyash, attended the trial after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah refused to hand them over to the international court.

Ayyash’s co-defendants, Hussain Hassab Oneissi, Assad Hassan Sabra and Hasan Habib Merhi, were acquitted on all charges in the indictment on grounds the evidence against them was “insufficient”.

The judges, however, said the DNA evidence showed the blast that killed Rafic Hariri was detonated by a male suicide bomber who was never identified.

Hariri served as Lebanon’s prime minister twice and resigned in October 2004, months before his death, in protest over Syrian influence in Lebanese politics.

The Sunni billionaire politician was killed on 14 February 2005 when 1,800 kilogrammes of TNT explosive hidden in a Mitsubishi van was detonated next to his motorcade.

The blast left 22 dead, including several of Hariri’s bodyguards and then-Minister for the Economy Bassel Fleihan.

The trial and investigation, which was held under Lebanon’s criminal laws and run by both Lebanese and international judges, has been 15 years in the making and cost approximately $1 billion.

READ: Hezbollah sues PM-designate’s brother over blast accusation