The LA Times reports today on the CBC investigation into the February 14, 2005 killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Based on leaked documents from the UN Tribunal, the report finds that the murder was carried out by Hezbollah with intelligence possibly from the Lebanese Internal Security Forces intelligence chief.
It has been anticipated for months that the UN Tribunal report would implicate Hezbollah and
Hezbollah has warned that it would not hand over any member and threatened to "cut off the hand" of any entity that tried to make an arrest.
"Hezbollah has come to the conclusion that anything short of vindication of all accusations will not be acceptable," said Kamel Wazne, founder of the Center of American Strategic Studies in Beirut, a think tank that covers regional issues.
Evidence of the group's guilt was determined from cell phone records according to the CBC as the UN Tribunal was able to
obtain the records of every single phone call made in Lebanon the year of Hariri's murder
Some of the report's findings:
# Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.
# UN investigators came to believe their inquiry was penetrated early by Hezbollah and that that the commission's lax security likely led to the murder of a young, dedicated Lebanese policeman who had largely cracked the case on his own and was co-operating with the international inquiry.
# UN commission insiders also suspected Hariri's own chief of protocol at the time, a man who now heads Lebanon's intelligence service, of colluding with Hezbollah. But those suspicions, laid out in an extensive internal memo, were not pursued, basically for diplomatic reasons.
The people responsible for this murder should be brought to justice. But given their military and political power, if they will be brought to justice, is another matter entirely.
UPDATE: Hezbollah is now beginning to acknowledge their involvement in the assassination according to Haaretz
A senior Hezbollah official on Wednesday hinted at the militant group's involvement in the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the first indication of the sort expressed by a member of the organization.
"Even if the organization did murder Hariri, that's no reason to destroy Lebanon," the London-based daily A-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Lebanese MP Walid Sakaria as saying.