LEIDSCHENDAM, The Netherlands -- In an often technical presentation at the first day of trial before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the prosecution began on Thursday to detail how it believes Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi and Assad Sabra participated in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 21 others.
The prosecution’s case rests largely on telecommunications data, and the bulk of the proceedings focused on mobile phones allegedly used by the accused and as yet unnamed others. A fifth suspect, Hassan Merhi, was mentioned frequently during the proceedings although his case, at present, is a separate legal matter. The prosecution has requested to join the two cases. A further hearing before the trial chamber is expected in the next few weeks, judges said during a Monday hearing on the matter.
Prosecutor Norman Farrell began the morning by offering a quick summary of the case.
“Despite the deliberate refusal and failure of accused to come, they are presumed innocent, and their rights are respected,” Farrell said.
“The burden of proof is on the prosecution, and the evidence will demonstrate this burden has been met,” he added.
Following Farrell’s summary, senior trial counsel Alexander Milne and Graeme Cameron went into more detail.
Milne focused on describing the enormous explosion that rocked Beirut – and was audible several kilometers away – on February 14, 2005.
Contrary to speculation early after the blast that the bomb was planted underground or that it resulted from a missile strike, Milne said the explosion was the result of an unidentified suicide bomber.
Utilizing footage from six closed circuit television cameras that were working near the explosion site the day of the bombing, Milne showed the court the van moving into place near the St. Georges Hotel on the day Hariri was killed.
“There was no time for the driver to have gotten out of the van,” Milne said after showing footage of the van disappearing from the camera’s field of vision seconds before the explosion. He also showed footage from New TV, a local Lebanese broadcaster, from the immediate aftermath of the attack.
Milne also said a controlled explosion conducted in France at a recreation of the crime scene, plus the size and shape of the crater the explosion caused, confirmed it was a bomb that must have been carried in a truck or van because of the sheer amount of the explosive materials used.
Milne said the prosecutor and experts who will testify later in the trial believe the bomb weighed around 2 tons and exploded from 80 centimeters above ground. In August 2005, Milne said, investigators found part of the engine casing from the van used in the suicide bombing that included the engine block number.
Because of the size of the explosion, Milne said the accused “knew and accepted that the bombing would kill or injure” many more people than Hariri, the intended target.
“This explosion was a cruel, cruel act,” he said.
Cameron, senior trial counsel for the prosecution, began to outline the telecommunications evidence the prosecution has against the accused. He will continue with his presentation on Friday.
He said the prosecution is relying on sequential mobile phones, personal mobile phones, groupings of phones that have been given color codes to help make the case more understandable that were used both for the attack and other purposes as well as “mission phones” used exclusively for the attack. Cameron later clarified that sequential mobile phones are phones Badreddine allegedly used only for short periods of time one after the other.
Cameron also said an important element in the prosecution’s case is based on cell phone towers. The towers, the prosecution alleges, show that the accused were at certain places at certain times. Often, Cameron said, they were monitoring Hariri’s movements. Oneissi is also accused of recruiting a Palestinian man to falsely claim responsibility for the attack – which he did in a video that was given to Al-Jazeera on the day of the bombing.
Cameron stressed that the color-coded networks of phones were used in line with a specific protocol. For example, the “mission phones” (Red, Blue and Green) were not used for purposes other than the attack and did not call other phones on different networks (i.e., Red only called Red). He also said that the accused generally followed something akin to a chain of command in communication. For example, he said Badreddine called Ayyash and Merhi, but that Ayyash and Merhi never called each other.
Cameron said the attack was planned and eventually carried out in five stages: from October 2004 to 10 November 2004, from 11 November 2004 to 20 December 2004, from 21 December 2004 to 13 January 2005, from 14 January 2005 to 7 February 2005 and from 8 February 2005 to 14 February 2005.
The first “blue network” phones were used to monitor Hariri near parliament in downtown Beirut on October 20, 2004. By December 2004, wherever Hariri went, “the phones of the co-conspirators were almost always there.”
Cameron also outlined why, using mobile phone data and relying on witness statements to be given later, the prosecution believes Oneissi met, befriended and convinced the Palestinian man – Ahmad Abu Addas, who went missing shortly before the February 2005 bombing – to falsely claim responsibility for the attack.
Cameron finished his opening statement detailing how the prosecution believes Oneissi became close to Addas. He will continue on Friday. Cameron said he believes he can finish his statement on Friday and that there should be time for the legal representative of the victims to also make a statement. If that schedule is kept, the defense teams of Oneissi and Badreddine will begin their opening statements on Monday.
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/stl-updates/530782-prosecution-begins-outlining-case-before-stl
