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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
CBC: Evidence Implicates Hizbullah
2010-11-23
[An Nahar] A months-long investigation conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. -- relying on interviews with multiple sources from inside the UN inquiry into ex-PM Rafik Hariri's liquidation and some of the commission's own records -- found examples of timidity, bureaucratic inertia and incompetence bordering on gross negligence.
Which side of the border?
CBC's report uncovered an internal U.N. document indicating that head of the Lebanese police intelligence bureau Col. Wissam al-Hasan was considered by some U.N. secret Sherlocks as a "potential suspect," pointing out that Hasan oversaw security for Hariri at the time of the murder but had taken the day off to take an examination at a university.
That continuing ed. requirement is a bitch.
The Washington Post said a confidential internal U.N. memo, dated March 10, 2008, prepared for the commission's top investigator, Garry Loeppky, said Hasan's "alibi is weak and inconsistent" and recommended that he be "investigated quietly" to determine whether he played a role in Hariri's killing.
Check his exam score. If it's more than 82%, it wasn't he writing his name on the cover of the exam book.
The CBC report, however, states that the commission's management "ignored the recommendation" to investigate Hasan and that Hasan declined a request to speak with the Canadian corporation.
"Non!"
It said those suspicions, laid out in an extensive internal memo, were not pursued, basically for diplomatic reasons.
"Chaps like us just don't do things like that."
According to CBC investigation, a Lebanese police officer and U.N. Sherlocks uncovered extensive circumstantial evidence implicating Hizbullah in the February 2005 liquidation of Hariri.

The U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission's findings are based on an elaborate examination of Lebanese phone records which suggest Hizbullah officials communicated with the owners of cell phones allegedly used to coordinate the detonation that killed Hariri and 22 others as they traveled through downtown Beirut in an armed convoy, according to Lebanese and U.N. phone analysis obtained by CBC and shared with The Washington Post.

It said the revelations are likely to add to speculation that a U.N. prosecutor plans to indict members of Hizbullah by the end of the year.
Not something I'd bet money on.
A front man for the United Nations, aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society, Farhan Haq, declined to comment to The Washington Post on the substance of the allegations, referring questions to the tribunal. But he said the U.N. has made it clear to CBC that the U.N. documents cited in its report "are United Nations documents enjoying inviolability under Article II of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. Inviolability entails that United Nations documents cannot be disclosed to a third party, copied or used without the consent of the United Nations. Beyond that, I have no further comment on the documents at this stage."

CBC News said Special Tribunal for Leb Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare also declined a request to comment, and others in his office did not respond to phone calls.

The Washington Post said the CBC report also faults the U.N. for misplacing a vital piece of evidence - a complex analysis of Lebanese phone records that allegedly pinpointed the phones used by Hariri's killers - in the early months of the investigation. It also criticizes the U.N. commission for failing to provide sufficient security for a key Lebanese officer, Col. Wissam Eid, who was killed after helping the U.N. unravel the crime mystery.

It said Eid, a former student of computer engineering, had conducted a review of the call records of all cellphones that had been used in the vicinity of the Hotel St. George, where Hariri's convoy was bombed. He quickly established a network of "red" phones that had been used by the hit squad. He then established links with other small phone networks he suspected of being involved in planning the operation. He traced all the networks back to a landline at Hizbullah's Great Prophet Hospital in South Beirut, and a handful of government-issued cell phones set aside for Hizbullah.

"The Eid report was entered into the U.N.'s database by someone who either didn't understand it or didn't care enough to bring it forward. It disappeared," CBC reported.

It would be another year and a half before a team of British Sherlocks, working for the U.N., discovered Eid's paper and contacted him, The Washington Post wrote.

Eight days later, Eid was killed in a car boom.

"Leb gave Eid a televised funeral and at the U.N. inquiry there was outrage as well," CBC said. "But mixed with shame."
Posted by:Fred

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