(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Lebanon is a land of impunity. The bigger the crime and the worse the culprit, the less chance there is of meaningful accountability. Witness the convoluted and inconclusive verdict of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Hariri was killed in a massive bomb blast in Beirut, shortly after he had decided to join demands for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from his country. Many Lebanese, despairing of a clean investigation and fair trial in their own law-enforcement and judicial systems, hoped that the United Nations tribunal based in the Netherlands would replace the incapacities of the Lebanese state with international legitimacy and authority.
Fifteen years later—and after the expense of almost $1 billion, much of it paid by Lebanon itself—the tribunal has issued what amounts to a split decision. It had initially indicted five Hezbollah operatives, but dropped charges against the most senior of them after he was killed in Syria in 2016. Of the four remaining, three were acquitted due to lack of evidence. One, Salim Ayyash, was convicted of helping to plan the attack. While the tribunal noted this was an act of political terrorism and that Syria and Hezbollah had obvious motivations, it said their direct guilt could not be established.
The ruling will be a Rorschach test, with every side in the Lebanese political arena seeing what it wants.
Hezbollah and its allies will point to the verdict as proof of their innocence. Their critics will point out that Ayyash had neither the personal motive nor the means to engineer a massive and precise attack, one that required enormous logistical support and significant organizational capacity, and bespoke a confidence of impunity. But the tribunal did not have the ability to make a U.S.-style racketeering case, indicting an entire organization for a crime of its operatives. It could not investigate states or groups, but only those individuals directly involved.
The UN’s efforts to secure truth and justice, where the Lebanese state obviously couldn’t, began well: the initial investigation established an enormous body of credible facts. They clearly established that the killing was indeed the work of a complex and military-style conspiracy, closely linked to Hariri’s growing opposition to Syria. There were details about the means and motives Assad and his Hezbollah allies had in orchestrating the killing. The tribunal, led by German judge Detlev Mehlis, appeared headed towards real revelations and high-level indictments.
But after a few months, Mehlis faced credible threats of assassination himself. In January 2006, he stepped down and was replaced by a Belgian judge, Serge Brammertz—who, for some reason, did not inspire similar threats. The investigation bogged down and never recovered.
By 2008 at the latest, it was clear that the tribunal was not interested in identifying the true authors of the murder; ever since, careful observers have expected something like Tuesday’s diplomatically convenient verdict.
All four indicted Hezbollah members are in hiding, including Ayyash. Hezbollah swore never to give them up. Even if Ayyash were somehow captured, he’d have to be tried again.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is taking a leading international role in Lebanon these days, will be gratified by the verdict. It affords him maximum room for maneuver in his complicated dealings with Hezbollah, and by extension its patron, Iran. He can use the conviction of Ayyash to pressure Hezbollah, even while justifying his continued engagement with it on the grounds no evidence was found to prove its direct responsibility.
In isolation, the tribunal’s verdict looks like yet another victory for impunity in Lebanon, the more egregious because it bears an international imprimatur.
But for Hezbollah, the bigger picture remains grim. The verdict will not long overshadow other trends that challenge its authority in Lebanon—the protest movement, the economic meltdown, the coronavirus pandemic and, of course, the massive explosion that destroyed much of Beirut.
To its deep discomfort, Hezbollah can no longer operate behind the façade of the state. The Lebanese government most directly responsible for the port explosion was entirely made up of Hezbollah allies. Its militia defends the corrupt political and economic system that has hollowed out the country.
The verdict may be legally and diplomatically equivocal on Hezbollah’s responsibility for Hariri’s killing. But the intense pressures that have accumulated over the past year will not ease.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
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