MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th August, 2020) The assassination of ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was an act of terrorism that pursued political, rather than personal motives, Judge David Re of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) said Tuesday.
The STL is to issue a verdict on the 2005 assassination of Hariri, the most prominent Sunni politician in Lebanon at the time.
"The attack was an act of terrorism that was designed to spread fear among the Lebanese population. It was committed for political and not personal reasons," Re said.
According to the judge, Hariri has been under surveillance in the months before the assassination, but the final decision on his murder appears to have been made in early March 2005.
Earlier in the day, Re said that there is no direct evidence of Hezbollah's involvement in the killing, noting that the movement might have had motives to have Hariri assassinated.
Hariri was killed by a suicide truck bomb in Beirut on February 14, 2005. The UN Security Council established the STL in 2007 to investigate the attack that killed Hariri and 22 others and injured 226 people.
Four suspects linked to Hezbollah have been tried in absentia as part of the trial. The Lebanese movement refused to cooperate with the investigation, claiming that the tribunal's goal is to denigrate Hezbollah and incite a sectarian strife in Lebanon. Hezbollah considers the STL to be "a tool of the United States and Israel."
