Hizballah intends to ensure they serve their sentences in absentia as well, and there appears to be no political will in Lebanon to demand otherwise. One of those indicted has boasted that authorities know where he lives, but cannot arrest him. The track record so far calls into question whether "all reasonable steps" were really taken to bring them into custody.
"Hariri assassination suspects to be tried in absentia," from CNN, February 2:
(CNN) -- The special court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced Wednesday it will try the four accused killers in absentia.The trial chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, headquartered in the Netherlands near The Hague, said it concluded that "all reasonable steps have been taken to secure the appearance of the accused and to notify them of the charges against them."
The efforts included multiple attempts by Lebanese authorities to find the four men at homes and workplaces, the chamber said. It also noted that the identities of the four men and their indictments received "massive publicity" in Lebanon, making it clear the men were being sought.
The chamber did not announce a date for the trial, but it will be at least four months away.
The United Nations-backed tribunal indicted the four men in June 2011 and made their identities public in July.
Hariri was killed in February 2005 when a bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut. The blast ripped apart his armored car and destroyed the motorcade, killing 21 other people and wounding 231.
All four suspects are charged with conspiracy aimed at committing a terrorist act.
The indictment says the alleged ringleader was Mustafa Amine Badreddine, while another man, Salim Jamil Ayyash, allegedly headed the "assassination team," responsible for physically carrying out the attack.
They are also charged with committing a terrorist act by means of an explosive device; two counts of intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives; and attempted intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives.
Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra were responsible for preparing a false claim of responsibility, the indictment says. They are charged with being accomplices to the same four counts.
Investigators used mobile phone data to place Ayyash and other members of the assassination team near locations where Hariri was in the days prior to his death, the indictment says. Similar data placed the men near points along the route of Hariri's convoy on the day of the bombing...
Look what Islam has done to Lebanon! Beirut was once the "Paris of the Middle East", now just a Muslim battlefield.
Shame on Islam.
"The chamber did not announce a date for the trial, but it will be at least four months away."
Why so long?...the defendants aren't going to be there.
To understand something of the situation in Lebanon, read Brigitte Gabriel, 'Because They Hate'.
She experienced, as a child born to Lebanese Christian parents and growing up in Southern Lebanon (the region now totally occupied, dominated and ruined by Hezbollah and their cohorts), the change from a majority-Christian country with a large Muslim minority, to a country dominated by Muslims. That bruising, terrifying experience is what drove her, after migrating to America and seeing Muslims establishing colonies there, to create ACT for America.
Further reading, for those with the time - Bat Yeor's 'The dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam' and 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam'. Heavy going - dense academic books that demand a lot of the reader - but use the index to trace something of the long, terrible history of the indigenous Christians of that part of the world.
If you can read French: get, and rea, the work of Antoine Fattal, who was a Lebanese Christian scholar who described and analysed the condition of the Christians under Muslim rule in his part of the world. it is time, and long past time, that his classic work - "Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam" /Antoine Fattal; [Beyrouth] : Impr. catholique, 1958 - was translated into English. It would be good to have an English edition of "Le statut legal.." perhaps with introduction and notes by Bat Yeor and by Dr Mark Durie.
Another great Lebanese Christian - and a true human rights activist, not the fake kind we encounter so much of today - was Dr Charles Malik. It was he who influenced the wording of the all -important clause of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that has to do with freedom of religion.