By Hussein Dakroub
BEIRUT: Lebanon informed the U.N.-backed court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri Tuesday that it has so far failed to arrest four Hezbollah members accused of involvement in the killing, a move that set the stage for their trial in absentia.

In the meantime, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel confirmed that police have carried out raids in various areas, including Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in search of the four party suspects.
“The Lebanese authorities reported to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on the measures that they have taken to search for, arrest and transfer those accused in the Feb. 14, 2005 attack,” the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon said in a statement.

The statement said that Lebanese Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza submitted his report to the STL Tuesday in which he stated that “so far none of the four people who are accused have been detained.”

“The president of the STL, Judge Antonio Cassese, will now consider the report carefully and will in due course make a determination on the next steps,” the statement said. “Lebanon’s obligation under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1757 [is] to arrest, detain and transfer the accused continues,” it added.
The STL did not release any details of Mirza’s report, which came two days before a 30-day deadline set by the tribunal for the arrests to be made.

Mirza told The Daily Star Tuesday that he had prepared a report on the results of the searches carried out to find the four accused, indicating that none has been detained because they have not been found. He said that he sent the report along with the STL’s indictments and arrest warrants to the tribunal’s registrar in Beirut.
Mirza, however, stressed that sending Lebanon’s response to the tribunal with regard to the arrest warrants did not mean that the mission of Lebanese authorities was over at this point.

“There are international arrest warrants and a red notice issued against those men and they will be followed up. But with the expiry of the one-month deadline given to us, we are obliged to inform the tribunal of the results we arrived at during this period,” Mirza said.
Charbel, confirmed that police have mounted raids in Beirut’s southern suburbs, as well in areas in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in search of the four Hezbollah members.

“The raids were carried out by a unit from the Central Judicial Police on orders from the Public Prosecution,” Charbel told The Daily Star Tuesday. He said the Judicial Police, which report to the Public Prosecution, are part of the Internal Security Forces.
The STL released its long-awaited indictment on June 30, accusing four Hezbollah members, including a military commander, of involvement in the massive suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others on Feb. 14, 2005, and demanded their arrest. It gave Lebanon 30 working days to arrest the accused.

Last month, the STL identified the suspects as Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi, and Assad Hassan Sabra. Badreddine is a senior Hezbollah official and brother-in-law of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bombing in Syria in 2008.

The STL released the names, photographs and details of the accused last month. Interpol last month issued red notices against the four suspects, a move that STL’s Prosecutor General Daniel Bellemare said would maximize the chances of finding the accused.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has rejected the indictment, vowing never to turn over the four accused members.

In a defiant speech on July 2, Nasrallah dismissed the tribunal as an “American-Israeli court,” saying that Lebanese authorities will not be able to arrest the four suspects “even in 300 years.”Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose 30-member government is dominated by Hezbollah and its March 8 allies, has pledged to cooperate with the STL.
Now that the four suspects have not been apprehended within 30 working days after the indictment’s release, the court will go public with the contents of arrest warrants. Lebanese authorities then have an additional 30 days to try and arrest suspects.

Meanwhile, two MPs from former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s parliamentary Future bloc declined to comment on Mirza’s report.
Future MP Ahmad Fatfat, also unaware of the report’s contents, said it was up to the STL to assess Mirza’s report and decide whether Lebanon made serious efforts to arrest the four accused.

“The tribunal will decide on the report even though the only party that knows the whereabouts of the four is Sayyed Hasan [Nasrallah]. I hope Sayyed Hasan will hand them over to the tribunal so that they can defend themselves,” Fatfat told The Daily Star. He said that by declaring that Lebanese authorities will not be able to arrest the four suspects “even in 300 years,” Nasrallah is putting Hezbollah in the position of the accused.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, a key ally of Hezbollah, asked to comment Mirza’s report, told a news conference after chairing a meeting of his parliamentary Reform and Change bloc Tuesday, “I had expected the [four] accused not to be handed over to the international tribunal.” – With additional reporting by Youssef Diab.