A newspaper owned by the slain former premier Rafik Hariri reported Tuesday that a UN report into his assassination is expected to accuse Lebanese authorities of negligence and evidence tampering. Hariri was killed on Feb 14 in a massive explosion on a seafront central Beirut street that devastated his motorcade and killed 17 others. A UN team dispatched to look into the attack completed its mission in Beirut on March 16. In the three weeks of investigating, Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald of Ireland inspected the bomb site and met Lebanese politicians, senior security and judicial officials, as well as members of the opposition.It is due to release its confidential report later this week, but leaks about its purported contents have emerged in recent days. Hariri's Al-Mustaqbal newspaper quoted various unnamed sources on Tuesday saying the UN team noted "a clear flaw in the scene of the crime where there was abnormal chaos and lack of coordination among security apparatuses." It pointed to the discovery of three bodies day after the explosion as evidence of the confusion that surrounded the cleanup operation. The paper also says the fact-finding team found Lebanese security authorities had "tampered with evidence by rushing to tow away Hariri's motorcade from the scene of the crime," to a police barracks, "then sending on the same night a bulldozer to fill the (explosion's) crater and cleaning the road in order to open it to traffic."
The government has said it was holding its own investigation into the explosion and has not made any official statements. Walid Jumblatt, a leading member of the anti-Syrian opposition demanding an international inquiry and the dismissal of Lebanon's pro-Syrian security chiefs, hinted on Sunday that the UN report did not have "good news to some of the joint (Lebanese-Syrian security) apparatuses." Meanwhile, members of Hariri's parliamentary bloc appealed to Arab leaders meeting in Algeria Tuesday to demand an international inquiry into the assassination, saying this represented "a serious gateway to uncover the truth and deal with the crisis caused by this crime."