Appeals judges at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Thursday convicted another two Hezbollah members on charges of terrorism and murder for their role in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, reversing their earlier acquittal.
"The appeals chamber had unanimously decided to reverse the acquittals (...) we unanimously find misters (Hassan Habib) Merhi and (Hussein Hassan) Oneissi guilty," Presiding judge Ivana Hrdlickova said in a summary of the judgement read out in the UN-backed court at The Hague.
The prosecution had appealed against the acquittal of the two men, saying there had been fundamental errors in the judgment.
Appeals judges said that the lower trial chamber wrongly assessed the circumstantial evidence in the case, which was based almost entirely on mobile phone records, when they acquitted Merhi and Oneissi.
In 2020 a lower trial chamber convicted a former member of Hezbollah, Salim Jamil Ayyash, for the bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others at the Beirut seafront. All three men have been tried in absentia and remain at large.
The court said Merhi and Oneissi will be sentenced at a later date and issued fresh arrest warrants for both men following Thursday's convictions.
