Outright Assassination

by Adel Beshara

  This was the climatic point toward which Charbel had been skilfully manoeuvring the court. For his evidence he reproduced a testimony by one Mohammad Arakah and a copy of a short letter from Sa’adeh to one of his aides in Palestine instructing him to establish contacts with the Zionists. He also presented the court with randomly selected pieces of evidence plucked out from internal SNP memos confiscated by the security forces. Charbel’s prosecution strategy now rested on proving that not only was Sa’adeh a traitor but also an opportunist. He declared:

  The attitude of the leader of the national party, Antun Sa’adeh, as regards the cause that he worked for many years, and as regards the dreams that filled his vivid imagination with hope, enthused us to go back to legendary incidents recorded in history such as that of Imru’ Al Qays.41 We said:

  My friend sobbed as our fate became clear He was sure that our end was similar to that of Caesar I said to him don’t let a tear fall off your eye for No one would blame us when we die seeking the summit

  When we saw that Sa’adeh was not moved by those words out of pride and arrogance, we said: At least say, out of pretence,

  It is written that we take these steps And he whose fate is to take a step, shall walk

  With cutting sarcasm, Charbel chose to conclude (some say open) his speech with the following prose:42

  Once the starlings could fly around a bit They began to suppose themselves soaring eagles

  On the only occasion he uttered during the prosecution phase, a perfectly nonchalant Sa’adeh evened the score quickly with some prose of his own:

  A starling cowers even when flying, But an eagle stays lofty when dying43

  The prosecution’s speech stands as a classic example of how the legal process can be prejudiced by misstatements of issues, abuse, and inflammatory appeals. In the course of his circus marathon, “Sa’adeh took momentary looks at [Charbel] and shook his head”44 when the Prosecutor bandied out negative epithets. However, if the public prosecutor thought he could unbalance Sa’adeh with his vindictive and bullying tactics he was wrong: the SNP leader displayed superabundant physical and psychological energy and managed to preserve his manner and his temper the whole time. He listened to the speech with intense interest, occasionally taking notes, and allowed the speaker to deliver his address uninterrupted.

  A Short Adjournment

  At half past three in the afternoon, the presiding judge adjourned the trial for five minutes. Waiting journalists were re-admitted into the court to take commemorative snap-shots of the trial and to report on proceedings. In his recollections of the trial, Berri recorded: “During the photo session all cameras aimed at Sa’adeh standing behind the steel bars with a carefree smile as if someone else was on trial, or as if he was an independent observer from another planet witnessing a process of justice in a trial that exhibited everything but justice.”45 In the pictures that appeared in the Lebanese press the following day, Sa’adeh looked exhausted and worn out. Al-Hayat described his personal condition as follows:

  He was dressed in a white jacket, a grey pair of trousers, and an American brightly-colored tie. He obviously had not shaved in days, his hair was uncombed. He was visibly disturbed, sometimes casting wandering glances, sometimes smiling. Yet, he was generally calm turning his eyes around the place.46

  Another description can be found in al-Qubs:

  His eyes were blood-red on account of the sleepless tiring nights he spent. They could not rest on one thing. Sometimes he would gaze at you, or be fixated on the floor. His face was red having been touched by the rays of the sun. His mouth tried to give way to a smile that only momentarily lightened up his face, then immediately vanished in resignation and despair.47

  The court was ready to proceed when Sa’adeh abruptly stopped the trial and demanded some food. The judges, in total disbelief, “gave him a dirty look and were rather surprised at the ease with which he turned proceedings around.”48 The presiding judge had a gendarmerie run over to his house, which was situated near the court, to fetch some food. He returned minutes later with a bowl of spaghetti and a cup of traditional yogurt. Sa’adeh devoured only “two spoons of spaghetti and three of yogurt”49 and went back to finish his answer.

  The Defense’s Speech

  The next order of business was Rizkallah’s speech for the defense. The court-appointed counsel had had no previous legal experience and had never been in a situation where he had to defend someone in a trial. He made up in courage what he lacked in trial experience. Rizkallah’s speech, prepared on the spot, lasted “a few minutes” and pleaded for leniency on the ground of insanity:

  Gentlemen,

  The defense regrets that the matter at issue includes current events that it cannot discuss nor can it defend the person who carried them out. Nonetheless, we would like to cite the following facts:

  Rebellion against the government and the rulers; Armed deviation from the homeland state and the higher interests of the country; Riots, disorder and offenses against public security, and acts of aggression; Gunfire and the gleaming metal of bayonets and the shedding of blood

  But I want you to look deeper through all of these facts to the psychology of this man from whom all these things preceded and so forth.

  We have here a man who imagined that he carried a mission to build and construct. Yet suddenly he in an almost unconscious way turns into a dangerous instrument of wide ranging destruction. I have to stress my point that he changed in a subconscious way since he found himself standing at a point in his life when his judgment could get impaired on the crossroads of those two possible futures, the future of construction and its opposite, the choice of becoming a destroyer.

  His intention was to soar up towards the first horizon yet at just that point he found himself drawn by a deviation in thought towards that second horizon so that he became – without properly understanding this – in a setting that he himself had not chosen as there gathered around him elements made up of malcontents and violent and destructive people so that he with them rolled up his sleeves for direct action.

  Thus, gentlemen, you have before you a man in the depth of whose personality a tornado raged that snatched away from him his clarity of mind and rational understanding so that what he had considered evil at his way of looking at things now seemed to him to be good and acts of terrorism to bring long desired redemption.

  Given this confused psychological condition pressing in upon the man, I request that you think seriously not about a complete exoneration of the accused given that his record is centered with the smell of gunpowder and caked with blood but that you do exonerate him of the deeds that he committed. That would be on the grounds that the things he committed only stemmed from a chronic confusion in his psychological context that dense clouds were more and more shrouding.50

  Rizkallah’s then read out article 233 of the Penal Code, which set out the grounds for leniency.51 He made no attempt to cross-examine witnesses. Nor did he ask Sa’adeh to take the stand. His speech was short and sharp designed to satisfy a predetermined role and to save Sa’adeh from death. Even if he had been allowed to spend more time at the tribunal it is most unlikely that he would have been able to mount an effective defense given that he was given almost no time to study the case. Rizkallah’s approach to the case was also self-defeating because in any trial where the government has a political reason for prosecution and is determined to obtain a conviction, normal tactics (for example, using influence to get the charges dropped or pleading guilty to a lesser charge to get a reduced sentence) will not work.

  At any rate, Sa’adeh disdained the plea of insanity. He made his feelings known to Rizkallah: “When I finished my address Sa’adeh looked askance at me and scolded me saying, ‘Insane am I?’ I answered him confusedly, ‘Let God be the judge between you and me, Sir.’52

  Sa’adeh’s Address

  It was Sa’adeh’s turn next to address the court. Despite the deadly seriousness of the charges and the controversial nature o
f the evidence, he was not allowed to plan his defense and was instead compelled to deliver an extemporaneous speech. He rose to the challenge. His two-hour address, though rudely interrupted by the prosecution “to break up the rhythm of his defense . . . mesmerised the whole courtroom, including the Guards, who were now being rotated every ten minutes.”53 Sa’adeh delved into philosophical issues “as though he was making an address to history and the nation.”54 This was less problematic than legal technicalities, but he ran the risk of slipping into the quicksand of Lebanese politics. To be sure, Sa’adeh had several options to choose from had he chosen to contest the prosecution case on legal grounds. For example, he was in a position to raise a cloud of legal and ethical issues associated with the evidence presented by the Public Prosecutor. He could also have argued, as Lahhoud subsequently did in the trial of his sympathizers, that since his revolution communiqué did not call for murder and intimidation of public institutions he was innocent of any capital offenses. Contesting the case on legal premises would have given Sa’adeh the ammunition to expose the trial for what it really was, a travesty, but he had neither the legal competence nor the time to consider this option.

  Although Sa’adeh’s speech has vanished with the other records of his trial55 it is possible to surmise its main points from newspaper reports (inaccurate as they may be) and individual accounts and recollections of the trial. Speaking fluently and with occasional fire, Sa’adeh ridiculed the charge of the prosecution that he was a national traitor. He reminded the court that he was “Lebanese from father to son. I don’t really think that there is anyone out there who can claim to be more Lebanese than me . . . I never denied the Lebanese State or the Lebanese entity, but my desire was to convert Lebanon into a base from which to launch the party’s ideology to neighbouring entities.”56 He continued in a historical résumé to explain the difference between Lebanon as a “political question” arising from a religious motive and Syria as a “national cause” in its own right. With enormous patience he reminded the court that he had never attempted to force the issue of Lebanon’s reincorporation into Syria on the Lebanese people:

  He said that Lebanon is part of geographical Syria. The task of convincing the Lebanese people of this fact required the eradication of a major obstacle, namely, sectarianism. He was at pains to emphasize that the Party’s commitment to a sectarian-free life for the Lebanese was not motivated by the desire to protect its image as a Non-Sectarian Party but because it was an integral part of its National Program . . . When sectarianism had been eliminated, Sa’adeh went on to tell the court, the national association between Lebanon and the rest of Syria will revert back to its natural character and all negative feelings and suspicion will vanish.57

  Sa’adeh’s egalitarian approach to the union question had been one of his stronger points, but he was often either misunderstood or misconstrued. At the core of his ideology lay the belief that reunification depended on the will of the people, not governments. Sa’adeh was explicit about this. He believed that reunification, as a national principle, had to be preceded by a program of intense national education in order to overcome the existing psychological barriers [and to point] out the kind of problems and contradictions that prevailed in Lebanon. It had to consist of making the Lebanese more aware of the national question and their stake in it. Inevitably, this would lead to Lebanon’s dissolution as a separate political entity but its re-incorporation into Syria would not be a question of merger or annexation, but one of genuine unity.58

  At some point in the speech, the presiding judge interrupted Sa’adeh to ask him specific questions about the rebellion:

  The presiding judge: Why then did you rebel against the Government?

  Sa’adeh: The Party had been insulted. The revolution was a mere response to correct this situation. The presiding judge: How can that be? Just because the Party had been

  insulted you declare revolution on the State and murder its men? Sa’adeh: As I said, the Party had been insulted and revolution was the only practical response. During any revolution there are bound to be victims on both sides.

  Sa’adeh: I take full responsibility for the revolution. I gave the orders for it.59

  To scuttle the charge of collaboration with the Jewish state, Sa’adeh went into a long explication of Zionism: “The focus of Sa’adeh’s address was on the national factor as the principal determinant of the Party’s policy and on the vital issues sweeping the Nation, like the Zionist menace and Sectarianism, which he regarded as just as dangerous as Zionism.”60 Sa’adeh did not enter into a tangled debate with the prosecution over the authenticity of his evidence. Instead, he used the courtroom as a forum to explain his views on Zionism. His exact words are not available, but if his earlier writings are any indication to go by, the speech would probably have been about the danger that Zionism posed not only to Palestine but to geographical Syria as a whole. Sa’adeh would have almost certainly repeated the warning, which all his writings continued, that Zionism would succeed unless it was confronted by a systematic counter-plan. What we are not certain of, though, is whether he dared to repeat his savage condemnations of Arab regimes for their pitiable handling of the conflict in Palestine.

  Sa’adeh concluded his speech with the words: “As I finalize my defense, I leave it to the conscience of the judges and their integrity to determine my fate.”61 A “deathlike stillness” then came over the court. Everyone, it seemed, was stunned by the speech. One witness described it as the most memorable moment of the trial.62 The Government-appointed Trial Commissioner, Michel Talhama, later recalled, “It would have taken ten attorneys to come up with the arguments that Sa’adeh produced and still they wouldn’t have been as articulate and far-sighted as he was.”63

  The Prosecution was equally amazed: “I assure you that [Sa’adeh] strongly and freely delivered a lengthy defense of himself that took quite a long time. No attorney could have covered the case so comprehensively like the defendant, Antun Sa’adeh, who discussed the matter through from A to Z.”64 On concluding his address, which lasted about two hours, Sa’adeh was taken back to prison and the judging panel retired to deliberate on its verdict.

  The Verdict

  Approximately two hours later, the five judges returned to the courtroom to pronounce the verdict. Inside and outside the courthouse the guard had been reinforced substantially that evening in anticipation of any last minute mishap. The opinion of the court was delivered by the presiding judge, Aziz Ahdab. He claimed that the verdict was unanimous, but at least one Lebanese newspaper said it was a majority ruling.65 Sa’adeh was sentenced to execution before a firing squad in accordance with Articles 308, 309, 314, and 315 of the general penal code, which penalized the membership of any organization that incited public disorder through violence or carried arms against the state with the intent of bringing about its overthrow, and Article 119 of the military penal code on the execution of the death penalty. The sentence was irrevocable. The decree governing the trial did not provide for any judicial appeal against the decisions of the special tribunals and prohibited the courts from reviewing any aspect of the operation of the tribunal. Invariably, when a person is convicted of a capital crime on circumstantial evidence alone, a substantial segment of the courtroom can be counted on to cry out against the verdict. At the pronouncement of the sentence by the presiding judge, “the courtroom was filled with commotion, voices cried out loudly with strong condemnation . . . Some left outraged, cursing and grudging.”66

  Sa’adeh was not present in the courtroom when the verdict was pronounced. He was brought back to the court later that evening and advised of the judgment by the clerk of the court in the presence of the state attorney and troops of the Lebanese army, in accordance with Article 84 of the Military penal code. Sa’adeh received the verdict with a self-possession that was remarkable under the circumstances. “Thank you,” was all he said in reply. He was then taken away in a waiting army jeep, accompanied by an exceptionally strong guard of m
ounted and motorized soldiers who had their weapons at the ready. A detachment of the Lebanese army guarded all approaches to the two-kilometer distance between the courthouse and the prison and snipers took up positions on rooftops to foil any last-minute rescue attempts. On arrival, Sa’adeh underwent a routine medical check-up, in keeping with prison rules, and sipped a cup of tea with the medical officer. He then took his jacket off, folded it around his shoes to create a pillow, and slept.67

  Evaluation of the Proceedings

  The trial of Antun Sa’adeh has posed a range of questions that retain their urgency to this day. Why did the Lebanese Government conduct the trial in such a secret and hasty manner? Was the trial political and, if so, why did the Government refuse to treat it as such? Did Sa’adeh receive a fair trial? The following is an evaluation of proceedings in Sa’adeh’s trial from various angles.

  1. The Administration of Justice

  Under Lebanese law, Sa’adeh’s trial seemed fair in the sense that the accused was permitted to make a full defense of his actions and explain his position with virtually no interference from either the prosecution or the court. He was also able to have the services of an appointed counsel in support of his position, and his counsel was permitted to comment on the charges. A number of other features of the trial, however, suggest that certain factors were at work which undermined both the substantive and procedural fairness of the proceedings.

  At the substantive level, the trial disclosed glaring shortcomings from beginning to end. It was railroaded with unprecedented speed and without respect to the defendant’s basic legal and human rights. Everyone, it seemed, was involved in the mockery: the regime, the army, the security apparatus, even the judges. The tribunal was more concerned with securing a conviction than uncovering the truth and every step in the trial was timed so that the defendant could not have an opportunity to defend himself. But on still other grounds Antun Sa’adeh’s trial was flagrantly unfair. The right of the accused to a reasonable time to prepare for trial was shockingly violated. Although the court did not deny him the right to engage a lawyer of his own choice, it went to great pains to thwart this right. When a competent trial counsel was found, he was allowed no time to familiarize himself with the case or to prepare his defense. He resigned in disgust.