Defense lawyers for four suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said Friday prosecutors have no valid evidence against the alleged bombers and have presented no possible motive for the truck bombing that killed him and 22 others.
The defense comments came at a news conference after the second day of the trial at a UN-backed tribunal on the outskirts of The Hague.
Lawyers for the four suspects, whom prosecutors say are supporters of Hezbollah, are scheduled to make opening statements Monday.
The suspects themselves are being tried in their absence at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, because they haven't been arrested nearly nine years after a huge truck bomb was detonated on Feb. 14, 2005, on a seaside road in Beirut.
But their court-appointed lawyers signaled they will mount a robust defense against a prosecution case built largely around records for mobile phones allegedly used by the plotters to plan and execute a bombing which sent shock waves through Lebanon.
Prosecutors are relying on a web of timings and locations of calls they say were made by the bombers as they tracked Hariri in the months, weeks, days and minutes before his assassination.
But the records don't include taped conversations or even text messages, said Antoine Korkmaz, who is representing the alleged mastermind Mustafa Badreddine.
Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, a French lawyer representing suspect Hassan Oneissi, added that prosecutors had presented no possible motive during their opening statement that took a day and a half.
Hariri, who also held Saudi citizenship, was one of Lebanon's most influential Sunni leaders, with wide connections in the Arab world and international community.
Lebanon has a history of political assassinations for which no one has ever been held accountable.