Aftermath
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was also created at his instigation. Syria was initially accused of the assassination, which led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon following widespread protests.[62] Major General Jamil Al Sayyed, then head of Lebanese General Security, Brigadier General Mustafa Hamdan, Major General Ali Hajj and Brigadier General Raymond Azar were all arrested in August 2005 at the request of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who was carrying out the UN investigation about the assassination. Sayyed was one of the persons who decided to assassinate Rafic Hariri according to a leaked draft version of the Mehlis report along with other Syrian high-rank intelligence and security officers and officials, namely Assef Shawkat, Maher Assad, Hassan Khalil and Bahjat Suleyman.[63] However, later reports about the assassination did not repeat the allegations against Jamil Al Sayyed and other three Lebanese generals. Four Lebanese generals were held in Roumieh prison, northeast of Beirut from 2005 to 2009.[64] They were released from the prison due to lack of evidence in 2009.[64]
Following Hariri's death, there were several other bombings and assassinations against minor anti-Syrian figures. These included Samir Kassir, George Hawi, Gebran Tueni, Pierre Amine Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem and Walid Eido. Assassination attempts were made on Elias Murr, May Chidiac, and Samir Shehade (who was investigating Hariri's death).
An indictment against alleged Hezbollah members Salim Jamil Ayyash, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hussein Hassan Oneissi, and Assad Hassan Sabra was issued and confirmed by the Pre-Trial Judge of the United Nations special tribunal (see Special Tribunal for Lebanon) in 2011.[65] In February 2014, the case against Hassan Habib Merhi was joined with the Ayyash et al. case.[66] Proceedings against the accused Mustafa Badreddine were terminated in July 2016[67] following credible reports of his death.[68] Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneissi, and Assad Hassan Sabra[69] currently remain on trial in absentia.[70]
In 2009 the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that some of the evidence supporting the indictment of Hezbollah involved a number of cellphones purchased in Tripoli shortly before the assassination, and were used by members of Hezbollah solely for the coordination of the assassination, except for a call from one of them to his girlfriend.[71][72] The ties to Hezbollah were exposed by Captain Wissam Eid of the Lebanese Internal Security Force, who was assassinated himself before the conclusion of the investigation,[72] as was Lebanese Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, one of the leading figures of the Special tribunal.[73]
In August 2010, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah presented intercepted Israeli spy-drone video footage to CNN, which he said implicated Israel because "they were tracking Hariri's whereabouts and the roads that he took every day." When asked what Israel's motive would have been, Nasrallah said, "They just wanted to start an internal strife."[74]
After an altercation between male Tribunal staff and women at a gynecology clinic in October 2010, Hezbollah demanded that the Lebanese government stop all cooperation with the Special Tribunal investigation, claiming the tribunal to be an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty by Western governments.
On 1 November 2010, a report was leaked by Al Akhbar, a local secular, leftist newspaper, stating that Hezbollah drafted plans for a quick takeover of the country in the case an indictment against its members is issued by the UN Special Tribunal.[75] The report states that Hezbollah conducted a simulation of the plan on 28 October, immediately following a speech by its secretary general.[76]
On the other side, it was revealed by leaked US embassy cables that then Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate director Omar Suleiman reported that Syria "desperately" wanted to stop the investigation of the Tribunal.[77]
In 2024, Salim Jamil Ayyash, the assassin of Hariri was reportedly killed by an IDF strike near al-Qusayr in the Homs region.[78]
