Witnesses Testify in Hariri Murder Trial
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon began for the first time on Wednesday to hear the testimonies of witnesses in the trial of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's February 2005 assassination.
The testimonies came after the STL prosecution, the lawyers for victims and defense attorneys of two suspects made their opening statements since the trial was launched last Thursday.
The four Hizbullah suspects – Mustafa Badreddine, Hassan Oneissi, Salim Ayyash and Assad Sabra - have been indicted in Hariri's murder in what prosecutors say was a suicide truck bombing that killed him and 21 others on the Beirut seafront.
The suspects are being tried in absentia because they haven't been arrested.
The fifth to be indicted was Hassan Habib Merhi, who was indicted later than the other four suspects and is not officially a suspect in the trial that started Thursday but several accusations have been made against him.
His lawyers are attending the trial in observer status.
Wednesday's hearing started with the prosecution listing the names and brief histories of the victims.
Then Abdul Qader Darwish, the brother of Mohammed Darwish, one of the victims of the attack, briefed the court on the emotional suffering of his family after the explosion.
Mohammed Darwish was part of the Hariri convoy.
The witness said his family and himself had also suffered from medical conditions due to their grief.
Darwish had to eventually identify his brother's body at a hospital, he said, adding the victim "was totally maimed and ripped apart.”
The second witness Mamdouh Mohammed Tarraf is the brother of victim Ziad Tarraf, who had worked for Hariri as a personal bodyguard since 1987.
Tarraf said he identified his brother from the shoes he was wearing. His body was burned but his feet were left intact.
A third witness, Robyn Fraser, who worked for the STL Office of the Prosecution between August 2009 and August 2011.
Senior Trial counsel, Alexander Milne of the office of the Prosecution, focused on various surveillance camera footage taken near the area where Hariri was assassinated.
He showed footage taken from the Suleiman Franjieh tunnel leading towards the Phoenicia and Monroe Hotels.
This footage focused on a white lorry, suspected of being the Mitsubishi vehicle that was carrying the explosives used in the assassination.
The testimony revealed that the lorry had arrived at the scene about an hour before the attack where it headed off on a road near the Monroe Hotel before once again being captured on the same camera, located at the exit of the tunnel, an hour later and presumably headed to the location where the attack was to take place.
The Prosecution then showed footage taken from a camera on the corner of the Phoenicia Hotel that also captured an image of the lorry.
It was stated during the testimony that the time stamp on the footage of the cameras can be placed manually, thus leading to findings that the time on the various footage was not accurate in line with the assassination.
The assassination took place at 12:55 pm on February 14, 2005.
The camera at the exit of the Suleiman Franjieh tunnel was found to be two minutes slower than actual time and the camera at the Phoenicia Hotel was found to be 48 minutes faster.
The Prosecution will focus on Thursday on footage taken by a surveillance camera at the HSBC Bank near the crime scene.
The session was adjourned to 11 am on Thursday.
The defense lawyers of Badreddine and Oneissi cited on Monday lack of evidence against the accused and stressed the difficulty of their role over lack of cooperation of the Lebanese authorities and lack of time to study the indictment.
Prosecutors are relying on a web of timings and locations of mobile phone calls they say were made by the bombers as they tracked Hariri in the months, weeks, days and minutes before his assassination.
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