LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands ? Prosecutors at a U.N.-backed court set up to prosecute the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told judges Friday it is too early to stage a trial in absentia for four Hezbollah members indicted in the assassination.
The fact that judges at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon are even considering a trial in absentia underscores the difficulty the court faces in having the suspects arrested in a country where the Iranian-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah is the most powerful force.
Hezbollah denies involvement in the Feb. 14, 2005, truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others, including the suicide bomber, on a Mediterranean seafront boulevard in Beirut.
Hezbollah's arsenal far outweighs that of Lebanon's national army, and the group's leader has vowed he will never allow a Hezbollah member to arrested for the killings.
Unusually for an international court, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's rules allow for the suspects to be tried in their absence if Lebanon fails to arrest them.
But prosecution trial lawyer Iain Morley said Beirut should be given more time to track down and arrest the suspects before judges order a trial in absentia. Arrest warrants for the four were issued in June.
"A trial in absentia should be a last resort and not a first choice," Morley told three judges and two alternate judges.
He said Lebanese authorities explain to the court's judges "why there are no further reasonable steps which can be taken to locate and effect the arrests."
The four suspects include Mustafa Badreddine, a Hezbollah commander who is also the suspected bombmaker for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans.
The other suspects are Salim Ayyash, also known as Abu Salim; Assad Sabra and Hassan Oneissi, who changed his name to Hassan Issa.
The suicide truck bomb that killed Hariri was one of the most dramatic political assassinations in the Middle East. A billionaire businessman, Hariri was Lebanon's most prominent politician after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990.
Hariri was one of Lebanon's most powerful Sunni leaders; Hezbollah is a Shiite group.
Prosecutors analyzed a vast network of telephone records to link the "assassination team" to the suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others, according to the 47-page indictment.
The indictment says the records showed "a coordinated use of these phones to carry out the assassination." According to the records, there was a flurry of calls shortly before Hariri's murder, but they stopped two minutes before the explosion.
The phones were never used again.
Morley said Lebanese authorities have "diligently and dutifully" tried to serve arrest warrants, but he added that was "not the same thing necessarily as locating and arresting" the suspects.
"There is more that can be done," he said.
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