Rising son of slain leader

last updated 8 January 2015

Beirut

Voters in Beirut this week overwhelmingly supported the party led by the son of the assassinated former prime minister Rafik Hariri. All 19 of Beirut’s seats in the 128-member parliament went to allies of Saad Hariri. The 35-year-old, a graduate of Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University, was raised in Saudi Arabia, where he ran the family’s multibillion-dollar construction empire. But after his father’s death in a February car bombing prompted massive protests against Syrian influence in Lebanon, Hariri returned to Lebanon to take up his father’s cause. Voting will continue in other regions of the country over the next two weeks.