The outgoing chief of the UN investigation into the murder of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, has said he is convinced that Syria was responsible for the murder. Asked by the Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat if he was "perfectly convinced of Syria's responsibility in the murder of al-Hariri," Detlev Mehlis, a German magistrate, said "yes". "The Syrian authorities are responsible," said Mehlis in the interview published on Saturday. He refused to go into detail. On Thursday, Mehlis told CNN that there was an obvious link between the spate of assassinations to have hit critics of Damascus since al-Hariri's killing in February. Damascus has consistently denied responsibility for any of the killings. "We will have to look and we are looking for links between the assassinations as, pretty obviously, there are links between all these assassinations that happened after the death of al-Hariri," Mehlis said.
The UN investigator, whose mandate for al-Hariri's inquiry ended on Thursday, will stay on until a replacement is found. He released two reports into the assassination, in October and this week, which both cited evidence suggesting that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers were involved in al-Hariri's murder. The second report coincided with the murder in a devastating car bomb attack of anti-Syrian MP and press magnate Gebran Tueni.