Two receive life sentences for killing of ex-Lebanese premier Hariri

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon sentenced two men to life imprisonment on Thursday for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
The two suspected members of the Shiite Hezbollah movement were convicted by the international tribunal based in Leidschendam, near The Hague, for the terrorist attack that killed a total of 22 people at the time.
Since the defendants Hassan Habib Merhi and Hussein Hassan Oneissi are fugitives, the sentence was pronounced in their absence.
Hariri was assassinated by a suicide bomber in February 2005.
Twenty-one other people were killed and 226 injured in the attack. Witnesses compared the explosion to an earthquake.
The attack prompted international outrage as well as horror in Lebanon. Syria was suspected to be responsible for the attack.
Merhi and Oneissi were acquitted in the first instance. In March, however, the special court overturned this verdict on appeal. The judges announced the sentence on Thursday. The special tribunal had been moved to the Netherlands for security reasons.
At the end of 2020, Lebanese citizen Salim Jamil Ayyash was sentenced to life imprisonment as the main mastermind of the attack.
It is considered unlikely that the three men will ever serve their sentences.
Hezbollah, which is associated with all three perpetrators, has so far refused to extradite them. Hezbollah is allied with Syria and Iran.