UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. prosecutor on Monday submitted a sealed indictment against suspects in the 2005 assassination in Beirut of a former Lebanese prime minister, concluding an investigation that has cast suspicion on top Syrian leaders and Hezbollah militants and contributed to the collapse this month of Lebanon’s pro-Western government.
Daniel Bellemare, the U.N. tribunal’s Canadian prosecutor, filed the indictment under seal late Monday before the court’s pretrial judge, Daniel Fransen. It could be at least several weeks before the identities of the suspects are known and nearly a year before a trial is likely to be held.
The case has roiled Lebanese politics, with widespread anticipation that the prosecutor will name members of the militant movement Hezbollah in connection with the bombing attack that killed the former prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, and 22 others.
Hezbollah has strongly denied any involvement in the killings, and the head of the Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has said he would not allow any Hezbollah members to be arrested. The militant group also has said the tribunal is an American-Israeli conspiracy.
Nasrallah has defended the group’s role in engineering the collapse of Lebanon’s government last week as a necessary measure to protect Lebanon from the consequences of the indictments, adding that the group acted “legally” and “constitutionally.”
Parliamentarians were expected to nominate a new prime minister Monday, but the issue was postponed as the leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar met in Damascus on Monday to discuss Lebanon’s political crisis. Deep divisions among Lebanon’s political leaders could leave Lebanon without a government for weeks, if not months, paralyzing their institutions.
