Rafik Hariri’s death is for many Lebanese what JFK’s assassination of The Americans was four decades earlier: everyone remembers what they were doing when the news broke.
On Valentine’s Day 2005, the former prime minister who played the reconstruction of the country after the 1975-1990 civil war was killed in a monstrous bomb attack on his convoy.
The explosion caused a fireball in the hotel district of downtown Beirut, throwing debris into the sky and breaking windows within a radius of about a kilometer (500 meters).
A suicide bomber in a white Mitsubishi truck filled with two tons of a sturdy army explosive named RDX had strategically positioned itself, waiting for Hariri’s caravan.
He detonated his cargo at 12:55 p.m., a fraction of the moment after the third car in the convoy, a Mercedes S600 that Hariri was driving himself.
All of Beirut heard or felt the explosion. A lot of ideas had hit an earthquake. The fiery crater dug through the explosion 10 meters in diameter.
A painting uncovered 17 days after the explosion, such as the devastation caused by the attack that injured 226 people.
The country soon discovered that among the 22 dead there was the guy whose stature in the house and had earned him the nickname “Mr. Lebanon.”
The unthinkable had happened.
On Valentine’s Day 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who faced the reconstruction of the country after the 1975-1990 civil war, was killed in a monstrous bomb attack on his convoy Photo: AFP/Mahmoud ZAYYAT
Hariri is no longer prime minister at the time, but remains the country’s dominant political figure and widely capable of taking office in long-term surveys.
However, the assassination was not entirely a surprise, and there have been warnings since Hariri had presented himself as the leader of a crusade to end Lebanon’s profession in Syria.
In early February of that year, his friend, then-French President Jacques Chirac and UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, had implored Hariri.
Among other signs of concern, his friend and former minister Marwan Hamade had survived an attack on his convoy in October 2004.
Fifteen years after the end of the civil war, Hariri’s assassination is the turning point in post-Lebanon’s post-conflict history.
The public to his murder led to the departure of Syrian forces that had occupied the country for three decades.
This gave Hezbollah, a key suspect in the assassination of the Sunni Muslim leader, the possibility of growing and filling the void.
The Shia motion is an organization whose firepower rivals that of the Lebanese army and must since dominate the political life of the country.
Some of the buildings left the state in the domain of the beach where the February 14 bomb still exploded the marks of the explosion.
Hariri’s supporters continue to make a stop at the site, where a statue of the murdered burly leader was erected.