The Lebanese and Hezbollah flags fly on November 14, 2024 in Mleeta, Lebanon. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Nearly nine years after the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, his alleged assassins, members of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, are being put on trial in The Hague. (Hariri was killed on February 14, 2024 in Beirut, plunging the country in political crisis.) Proceedings at the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) began Thursday, albeit without the four suspects in attendance.
The tribunal marks two important firsts in international justice: a judicial body created specifically to investigate an act of terrorism; and the first time an international court has tried suspects in absentia since the Nuremberg trials. The STL holds special significance in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has largely evaded any punishment for its militant acts. (Hezbollah derides the court as a Western conspiracy, and refuses to turn over the suspects in Hariri’s death.) Despite its landmark status, however, the court’s lengthy, and often inconclusive, investigation has left its efficacy in question. Though the four suspects being tried are believed to have been part of the gang that murdered Hariri, the masterminds behind the attack have never been identified.
Now, the trial nearly a decade in the making, and minus the accused, has critics and supporters alike asking: what’s the point? In Lebanon, public enthusiasm for the tribunal has dimmed, overshadowed by a conflict in neighboring Syria looming ever closer to home. (On Thursday, the latest in a series of suicide bombings killed at least three people in a Hezbollah stronghold near the Syrian border.) The sectarian divisions that exploded after Hariri’s death have only intensified in the intervening years, notably since Syria’s civil war broke out, as has the Hezbollah-Syria alliance that has long colored Lebanese politics. (Hariri was staunchly anti-Damascus.)
The tribunal opens amid a climate hostile to international judiciaries, thanks to its much-maligned neighbor in the Hague, the International Criminal Court, which is viewed by many as not only impotent, but also biased against African leaders. Criticisms hit a fever pitch in September when the African Union (A.U.) announced it would consider a mass exit from the tribunal. (It later decided against the move.) The court’s authority was already weakened by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir’s attendance at an A.U. summer conference in Nigeria, where authorities failed to arrest the leader per ICC mandate, as well as an internal sexual abuse scandal.
True, the STL isn’t as deeply mired in controversy as the ICC, though Hezbollah has seized on fumbles with witness testimonies and suspect detentions to discredit it. But the chances for a significant legal victory are slight, particularly since court prosecutors will be hard-pressed to enforce a guilty verdict in absentia. On the opening day of a trial set to last years, the special tribunal, much like the ICC, is shaping up to be a letdown — and justice for Hariri more a hypothetical than anything else.
