Hariri indictment claims assassins given away by their phones

Hezbollah suspects can be linked to phones used to plot killing of former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri, UN tribunal says Mobile phones used by the assassins of the former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri mapped their movements as they tracked him around Beirut for more than a year, then eventually betrayed their identities, according to a United Nations tribunal established to investigate the killing. A prosecution indictment , which has charged four members of Hezbollah for conspiring to kill Hariri, alleges the phones were used for different phases of the complex plot and can conclusively be linked to each of the accused. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday morning, more than six years after Hariri was killed by a two-and-a-half-tonne car bomb on the Beirut waterfront and almost two months after it was handed to the Lebanese authorities by the tribunal, based in The Hague. It focuses heavily on networks of phones that investigators believe were intended to be used only to plot the assassination. Five networks were identified and hundreds of calls made by the numbers linked to them have been traced to cell towers near where Hariri was at the time. The 47-page indictment does not explicitly state how any of the accused, Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Assad Sabra, or Hussein Oneissi, were linked to the networks, but implies that one or more may have used a covert phone to call a number that they were known to use privately. Investigators are believed to have put together their case from one or more such lapse. The indictment also suggests that documentary evidence and witness statements helped corroborate what it concedes is a largely circumstantial case. Badreddine, who is one of Hezbollah’s most senior figures, is accused of being the controller of the group, while Ayyash is alleged to have carried out the operation. Both are brothers in law of a former overall military commander, Imad Mugniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. Sabra and Oneissi are accused of orchestrating a false claim of responsibility in the hours following the blast on 14 February 2005 that killed Hariri. Oneissi is accused of recruiting a 22-year-old Palestinian, Abu Adass, from al-Houry mosque in west Beirut who would be used to make a videotaped false claim of responsibility. Adass vanished on 16 January 2005, a month before Hariri was killed. Hariri’s assassination polarised an already brittle Lebanese state and it is still dealing with the repercussions. The allegations of Hezbollah’s involvement, first raised in 2009, inflamed sectarian tensions between Hariri’s largely Sunni Muslim support base and Hezbollah’s Shia Islamic backers. Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has mounted a strident campaign to discredit the investigation, pointing to a string of espionage arrests in Lebanon, including several of technicians in mobile phone carriers, which he claims allowed Israel to manipulate call data records. Lebanon’s court of public opinion remains divided along sectarian lines about the merits of the investigation. Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, who was ousted by the Hezbollah-led opposition as prime minister in January, has insisted that Nasrallah hand over the four accused and allow a trial to be held. He has refused to do so and Lebanese authorities could not locate the men during the month the tribunal gave them to do so after it handed over the indictment on June 30. Saad Hariri said on Wednesday: “Today, the international justice has decided to reveal an important part of the proofs and facts related to the terrorist assassination crime, which took the life of one of the important symbols of moderation, nationalism, integrity and success in Lebanon and the Arab world. “What is required of Hezbollah’s leadership is simply to announce their disengagement with the accused.” Nasrallah is expected to make a further television address rebutting the detail in the indictment, however Hezbollah MPs in the Lebanese parliament have said privately that they believe their leader has done enough to convince supporters that the group has been the target of a conspiracy. The content of the indictment is unlikely to satisfy those closest to Hariri who have argued ever since his death that those who ordered his killing must be investigated with the same rigour as those alleged to have carried out the plot. The assassination took place when Hariri was at loggerheads with the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, over Assad’s demand that the term of the Syrian-anointed Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, be extended. The indictment does not address the motive for the killing. A trial in absentia is likely to be held in The Hague later this year, or early in 2012. Lebanon Middle East Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 17, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.