UN blames Hezbollah
Source: Agencies |
November 23, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
UNITED Nations-backed investigators have found that members of Hezbollah were behind the assassination in 2005 of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, CBC News has reported citing inquiry sources and documents.
It said evidence gathered by Lebanese police and later by UN-backed investigators "points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah."
Hezbollah, which is part of a unity government led by Hariri's son Saad has repeatedly denied any involvement in the killing. Its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he will not allow the arrest of anyone from the group.
It said yesterday it had no comment on the CBC News report. UN investigators could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hezbollah and western diplomats say that an expected indictment against members of the group could come late this year or early next. Lebanese politicians fear a possible relapse into violence if that proves to be the case.
CBC News said on Sunday that it had obtained mobile telephone and other telecommunications evidence which is at the core of the?case.
It said that in 2007 the investigators asked a British firm to analyze telephone calls made in Lebanon in 2005.
"What the British analyst showed them (the UN investigators) was nothing less than the hit squad that had carried out the murder, or at least the phones they had been carrying at the time," CBC News said.
Hariri's assassination plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war and tensions threatened to boil over into another bloody conflict.
The CBC News report is close to one published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2009, in which it cited information it had obtained saying that investigators believed Hezbollah was behind Hariri's killing.
It said evidence gathered by Lebanese police and later by UN-backed investigators "points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah."
Hezbollah, which is part of a unity government led by Hariri's son Saad has repeatedly denied any involvement in the killing. Its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he will not allow the arrest of anyone from the group.
It said yesterday it had no comment on the CBC News report. UN investigators could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hezbollah and western diplomats say that an expected indictment against members of the group could come late this year or early next. Lebanese politicians fear a possible relapse into violence if that proves to be the case.
CBC News said on Sunday that it had obtained mobile telephone and other telecommunications evidence which is at the core of the?case.
It said that in 2007 the investigators asked a British firm to analyze telephone calls made in Lebanon in 2005.
"What the British analyst showed them (the UN investigators) was nothing less than the hit squad that had carried out the murder, or at least the phones they had been carrying at the time," CBC News said.
Hariri's assassination plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war and tensions threatened to boil over into another bloody conflict.
The CBC News report is close to one published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2009, in which it cited information it had obtained saying that investigators believed Hezbollah was behind Hariri's killing.
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