The armed Shiite resistance group who remained silent after the UN indictment, have previously denied any involvement in the suicide truck bomb that killed Rafik Hariri and 22 others on Feb. 14, 2005 A high-ranking Hezbollah memer was among four people indicted by an international tribunal in the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. One of the people named is Mustafa Badreddine, believed to have been Hezbollah's deputy military commander. He is the brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh and is suspected of involvement in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait that killed five people. The other suspects are: Salim Ayyash, also known as Abu Salim; Assad Sabra and Hassan Anise, who changed his name to Hassan Issa. The implication of Hezbollah, the dominant player in Lebanon's new government, threatens to plunge this Arab nation on Israel's northern border into a new and violent crisis. The armed Shiite resistance group denies any role in the killing and vows never to turn over any of its members. The case has further polarized Lebanon's rival factions — Hezbollah with its patrons in Syria and Iran on one side, and a Western-backed bloc led by Hariri's son, Saad, on the other. The suicide truck bomb that killed Rafik Hariri and 22 others on Feb. 14, 2005, was one of the most dramatic political assassinations in the Middle East. A billionaire businessman, Hariri was Lebanon's most prominent politician after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990. In the six years since his death, the investigation has sharpened some of Lebanon's most intractable issues: the role of Hezbollah, the country's most powerful political and military force, and the country's dark history of sectarian divisions and violence. Rafik Hariri was one of Lebanon's most powerful Sunni leaders; Hezbollah is a Shiite group. The U.N.-backed tribunal issued the indictments on Thursday without releasing the names of the accused. But a Lebanese judicial official who saw the warrants gave the names to The Associated Press, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The details of the murder — including how and why it was carried out — are still under wraps. One of the people named is Mustafa Badreddine, believed to have been Hezbollah's deputy military commander. He is the brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh and is suspected of involvement in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait that killed five people. The other suspects are: Salim Ayyash, also known as Abu Salim; Assad Sabra and Hassan Anise, who changed his name to Hassan Issa. Hezbollah had no immediate comment Thursday. The group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has denounced the court as a conspiracy by the U.S. and Israel and said last year that the group "will cut off the hand" of anyone who tries to arrest its members. It was a potent threat, given that Nasrallah commands an arsenal that far outweighs that of the national army. Lebanese authorities have 30 days to serve the indictments on suspects or execute the arrest warrants. If they fail, the court can then order the indictment published. The Hague-based Hariri tribunal can hold trials in absentia if suspects cannot be arrested. Hariri's son, opposition leader Saad Hariri, hailed the indictment as a historic moment and urged Lebanon's new government to honor the arrest warrants. "Lebanon has paid the price of this moment, in decades of killings and assassinations without accountability," he said in a statement. "The end of the killers' era has begun, and the beginning of the justice era is approaching." Current Hezbollah ally and Druse leader Walid Jumblatt said during a Friday press conference that stability is more important than justice in this deeply divided country. His support is crucial if Lebanese authorities are to cooperate with the international court. The indictment raises concerns of a possible resurgence of violence that has bedeviled this tiny Arab country of 4 million people for years, including a devastating 1975-90 civil war and sectarian battles between Sunnis and Shiites in 2008. Conflicts over the court triggered a political crisis in January that brought down the Western-backed government of Saad Hariri, who had been prime minister since 2009. He had refused Hezbollah's demands to renounce the court investigating his father's death, prompting 11 Hezbollah ministers and their allies to resign from his unity government. After Rafik Hariri was assassinated, suspicion immediately fell on Syria, since Hariri had been seeking to weaken its domination of the country. Syria has denied any role in the murder, but the killing galvanized opposition to Damascus and led to huge street demonstrations that helped end Syria's 29-year military presence. The tribunal, which is jointly funded by U.N. member states and Lebanon, filed a draft indictment in January but the contents were not revealed while Belgian judge Daniel Fransen decided whether there was enough evidence for a trial. The draft has been amended twice since then. Now, the US is pressing for the Lebanese government to take action following the indictment. Lebanon formed a new government last month — after five months of political wrangling — that gives Hezbollah unprecedented political clout. But Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who was Hezbollah's pick for the post, has insisted he will not do one side's bidding. On Thursday, Mikati tried to calm tensions while also navigating between the rival political factions. "Lebanon's interests should be above all things," Mikati told a news conference, adding that there was no final word yet on who killed Rafik Hariri. "The indictments are not verdicts," Mikati said. Saad Hariri has refused to take part in the government and now leads the opposition. Abraham Bryan, an expert on Hezbollah affairs who writes for the leading An-Nahar newspaper, said the indictments were unlikely to have any immediate effect — in part because Badreddine is the only well-known suspect named in the indictment. "Hezbollah surrounds its military leadership with secrecy," he said. "Nobody knows the three others. ... Are they alive or not? Are these their real names or no?" Prominent Lebanese Journalist Emad Mermel writing in Lebanon's daily As-Safir said Friday in an article that "the party (Hezbollah) is not afraid of the possibility of incitement against it ... since it doesn't condsider this type of targetting new, and has been subjected to it in different forms in the past years. It is enough, according to Hezbollah, to review Wikileaks documents to prove the extent of direct incitement against it." Mermel reiterated the belief that the indictment is politicized against Hezbollah in order to destroy its resistance capacity against Israel, a claim Hezbollah upheld since the beginning of the case. The polarization surrounding the UN tribunal is stark, one side seeing it as a conspiracy, the other as an effort to establish justice. Lebanese political commentator and professor of political science at California State University As'ad Abu Khalil asked Thursday on his blog the question “you think anyone is taking the court seriously?” He continued by saying “look at public opinion polls in Lebanon, even among Sunnis. Hasan Nasrallah did an excellent job in discredit the court in Lebanese and Arab eyes.” Conversely, the editorial of Lebanon's Daily Star Friday held the view that “cooperation is needed if Lebanon is to uphold its STL (Special Tribunal for Lebanon) commitment. There is no half measure to be had; an obligation made to justice should bear no regard to the political climate and should take less notice of incendiary intimidation by those opposed to the court.” So far, the government's has taken no clear position, saying in a statement on Thursday it“confirms that it will follow the progress of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was set up in principle to see justice served in a manner that is neither politicised nor vengeful, and as long as it does not negatively affect Lebanon's stability and civil peace."
