Hezbollah members get life terms for Lebanese leader’s death

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Appeals judges at an international tribunal have sentenced two members of the militant Hezbollah group to life imprisonment for their roles in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the deaths of 21 other people. The convicted men, Hassan Habib Merhi and Hussein Hassan Oneissi, remain at large. They were tried in their absence at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Netherlands. Merhi and Oneissi were convicted on appeal in March of five crimes, including being accomplices to intentional homicide. Hariri and the 21 others were killed when plotters detonated a huge truck bomb outside a hotel on Beirut’s seafront as Hariri’s motorcade drove past.