Photo Gallery Lebanon Divided
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will soon begin official proceedings into the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. The trial comes at a time when Lebanon is at risk of fracturing. This file photo shows a billboard showing an image of Hariri not far from his grave in 2011.
Twenty-two other people died in the attack on Hariri, which took place on Valentine's Day in 2005. The investigation into the bombing has been extremely political and full of errors.
There are five primary suspects who will be tried in abstentia at the Special Tribunal in the Netherlands. Four of them are pictured here. From left to right, top to bottom: Mustafa Badr al-Din, Assad Sabra, Hassan Oneissi and Salim Ayyash. Nobody knows exactly where the suspects are today.
Sectarian violence has increased once again in Lebanon in recent months. On Jan. 2 of this year, a car bomb exploded in southern Beirut, killing at least five people. This image shows a funeral for two of the victims held the next day. The attack appeared to be targeting the Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group which holds significant power in Lebanon and which is said to be behind the Hariri killing.
Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2000. Peace in Lebanon depends on an intricate balancing act among its many ethnic groups and religious denominations, primarily Shiites, Sunnis and Christians.
Detlev Mehlis, of Germany, was in charge of the Hariri investigation from 2005 to 2006 and implicated Syria in the assassnation. He urged Damascus to start its own investigation into the case.
A Lebanese woman passes by a giant portrait of Hariri. We lurch from crisis to crisis, with superficial calms in between. But the crises are coming closer and could soon merge into a single, all-consuming crisis, Mohamad Chatah, the former Lebanese finance minister who is a friend of the Hariri family, said in December. Two weeks later, Chatah himself was killed in an attack.
