Nadine Elali and Ana Maria Luca

On February 14, 2005, Youssef Mezher, a 53-year-old Lebanese driver, was at work in the Saint Georges Hotel. When a van packed with explosives blew up former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s car, Mezher, among dozens others, was collateral damage.
“I was buried under the rubble. Ten more minutes and I would have died,” he told NOW Lebanon. “I was taken to the American University Hospital, and I stayed there for 25 days for surgery.  Then I was in bed at home for nine months.”

He says that the only thing he has been thinking about since the explosion that almost took his life is knowing who is responsible for his injuries and asking for compensation.
“I still have silver rods in both my legs, and I still need to undergo operations. I was greatly affected. I haven’t seen anything from either the state or anybody else,” he said bitterly. “We live in Lebanon. What do you expect?”
 
Mezher is one of the victims in the Hariri case who can apply for participation in the court proceedings of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The STL’s Victim Participation Unit announced after the pre-trial judge confirmed the indictment last month that the victims, either relatives of the deceased or people who were wounded in the attack, have the right to fill out an application form to be present at hearings and other proceedings.

“We are organized now to be able to support the application process,”Allain Grellet, the head of the STL Victim Participation Unit, told NOW Lebanon, adding that the VPU has already sent people to Beirut to reach out to victims and guide them through the application process. The VPU has set up a hotline for victims to call and ask to get in touch with a liaison officer. “We posted the number on our website. The victims will be provided with all the facilities in order to reach out to The Hague,” he added.
However, many of the victims contacted by NOW Lebanon hadn’t heard of the STL’s VPU, although they expressed interest in applying for participation.

“No one told me about this unit,” Mezher said. “I know about the right to file for damages; I have already filed a lawsuit against an unknown [assailant] in the Lebanese courts. It was based upon a conversation I had a long time ago with delegates from the STL. They told me that I had this right. But time goes by, and I really don’t know what will happen now,” he said.

Abed Darwich, 25, lost his brother, Mohammad, in the assassination. His brother was one of Rafik Hariri’s bodyguards. Darwich said he hadn’t heard about the VPU before the interview, but that he’d fill out the application form.

“Now that I know, of course as a family we will participate,” he said. “We have a lawyer, and he is taking care of all the legal work, but if there’s anything I can do on an individual level, I will do it. Anything that I can do to assist in the process, I will be part of it,” he said.
 
Grellet said that reaching out to the victims in the Hariri assassination is not an easy task, especially with the current March 8 government. “We have to rely on NGOs, on the media to send out our message,” he said.  In order to reach the victims, a video produced by his unit will be distributed to television stations around Lebanon. The VPU will also provide security to the victims who need it, according to the STL’s statute, and their applications will be kept confidential.

The application process is only open for the victims in the Rafik Hariri case. However, victims of other assassinations that took place in Lebanon that might be linked to the Hariri case expressed hope that they might be included in the proceedings.

Andre Flouti, whose husband Nicolas died when An-Nahar manager Gebran Tueni was assassinated in 2005, also said she didn’t know about the VPU’s existence. “Please, give me the website so that I can see it,” she said. “I really need to know if I will be compensated. If I apply to the Lebanese court, I have no faith that I will be compensated for anything,” she said. “I will end up applying myself. I cannot afford to pay a lawyer,” she told NOW Lebanon.

Elias Azar lost his father in the roadside bomb that killed Internal Security Forces captain Wissam Eid, who was investigating the Hariri killing. Azar said he is still waiting for an investigation to link the explosion in Hazmieh to the Hariri assassination.
“I believe that that everyone should be involved in this, because the attacks that followed are related to the first, but they told me that this is not the case, that only if they find a connection later they will look into it,” he said.