A UN-backed tribunal sentenced a member of the Hezbollah militant group to life imprisonment Friday for his involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The defendant, Salim Ayyash, has never been arrested and was not in court at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for Friday's sentencing hearing.
“Mr. Ayyash participated in an act of terrorism that caused mass murder. His role ... was vital to the success of the attack," Presiding Judge David Re said.
“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," Re added.
The court has issued an international arrest warrant for Ayyash for the "extremely grave" crimes.
The tribunal convicted Ayyash in August of being a co-perpetrator in five charges linked to the suicide truck bombing on Beirut's seafront on February 14, 2005. The huge blast killed Hariri and 21 others and injured 226.
The convictions in August were condemned by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who said they confirmed the group's position that the Hariri assassination "investigation is neither transparent nor scientific".
The Hezbollah chief's statements refusing to surrender Ayyash led Australian Judge Re to make the "inference" that he was being shielded from justice, he said.
The assassination that plunged Lebanon into a crisis
Hariri's assassination plunged Lebanon into what was then its worst crisis since its 1975-90 civil war, setting the stage for years of confrontation between rival political forces.
The "massive" bombing left 11-metre (33-foot) wide crater was "intended to and in fact inflicted terror", the court said.
The attack triggered mass protests that drove Syrian forces out of Lebanon after three decades. Hariri had opposed the Syrian presence in Lebanon.
Judges said Ayyash was at the centre of a network of mobile phone users who scoped out Hariri's movements for months before his assassination.
Sentencing Ayyash on Friday, the court said while there was no direct evidence of Syria or its ally Hezbollah's involvement, the attack "most probably had to involve state actors".
"The state with the most to gain from Mr Hariri's assassination was probably Syria," Judge Janet Nosworthy said.
'Culture of impunity'
Prosecutors had said five concurrent life terms were the "only just and proportionate sentence" for Ayyash, given it was the "most serious terrorist attack that has occurred on Lebanese soil".
Legal experts said the sentencing was still important, even without Ayyash in the dock.
"In absentia trials are of course not the ideal way of dispensing international justice," Christophe Paulussen, senior researcher at the Asser Institute in The Hague, told AFP.
International tribunals were like "a giant without arms and legs" since they relied on states to arrest suspects and could not enforce orders themselves.
"But even with this handicap, the STL has now at least established a very authoritative judicial record about what happened 15 years ago, thus assisting the Lebanese society in moving away from a culture of impunity towards one of accountability," said Paulussen.
The UN Security Council agreed in 2007 to establish the court, billed as the world's first international tribunal set up to probe terrorist crimes.
It opened its doors in 2009, although the Hariri trial itself did not formally start until 2014.
The court has cost at least $600 million to operate and has so far heard only four cases, two of them for contempt of court about news reports with information about confidential witnesses.
Ayyash faces a separate case at the tribunal over three other deadly attacks on Lebanese politicians in 2004 and 2005.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)
