Naharnet - UN Investigators Identify Some Names in Hariri Assassination Squad, Report - November 23, 2010

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) said in a lengthy investigative report that the findings of the U.N. inquiry into ex-PM Rafik Hariri's assassination point a finger at Hizbullah, and not Israel.

To date, the report said, the U.N. inquiry has reportedly spent in the range of $200 million and there has been talk for some time now that it is preparing to bring down indictments, possibly late this year or in early 2011.It said Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare is singularly uncommunicative about whatever progress has been made, as was Brammertz. From time to time, Bellemare has assured the Lebanese media that justice is proceeding, must remain confidential and shouldn't be rushed. Bellemare refused repeated requests to speak to CBC News about this report. The commission's telecom team eventually produced a succession of sophisticated charts depicting the phone networks behind the Hariri killing. CBC News has obtained a fairly recent iteration. In recent months, it said, investigators even attached names to some of the red phones carried by the Hariri hit squad. But the biggest problem, according to several sources, has been converting the telecommunications analysis into evidence that will stand up in a court of law. That means someone has to find financial records, or witnesses or other evidence, to actually place the phones in the hands of the alleged perpetrators. As of mid-2009, sources say, the commission had not done so. "There was no (corroborating) evidence whatsoever," one former insider told CBC. "And there was no hope of getting any evidence. Because who are you going to put on the ground in southern Beirut to go digging around? You can't put anyone on the ground. It's not possible." What's more, the commission never used wiretaps, even after it identified certain phones in networks that hadn't gone dead. In all likelihood, the report went on to say, any formal request to the Lebanese authorities for a phone tap would have become known in short order to Hizbullah, given its connections. And Bellemare wouldn't allow his investigators to buy and use eavesdropping technology on their own. He had, though, gone cap-in-hand to Washington, looking for help from its intelligence agencies, CBC News said. There, he met with Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and with then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. But he was rebuffed, the report added. Bellemare had not been Washington's choice for the job and U.S. officials did not hold him in terribly high regard. They were aware he had been spending much of his time obsessing over the trappings of his U.N. offices, ordering in tailored clothes, boasting about his prosecutorial prowess and designing a personal coat of arms. CBC said his underlings had watched, bemused, as he dispatched security staff to Beirut's more fashionable shopping districts to inquire about having the family crest embossed on pieces of jewelry. "If I was given to conspiracy theories," one of Bellemare's former officials told CBC. "I'd think he was deliberately put in there so as not to achieve anything." Secret intercepts from intelligence agencies like the CIA or National Security Agency are not useable in a court such as the U.N. Special Tribunal. And, knowing of the leaks and other problems at the U.N. commission, no intelligence agency in the West was prepared to hand over such sensitive material. According to the report, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in April 2009, in advance of a critical election. Saad Hariri has retracted some of his earlier comments about Syrian involvement in his father's death but the West is still applying pressure. When Hadley politely inquired as to what Bellemare would consider a success — indictments, actual arrests, declarations of official suspicions? — the Canadian waffled, unable or unwilling to provide a precise answer. The report takes us back to Lebanon now, saying Hizbullah had begun mounting a campaign to ensure that gathering supporting evidence would remain next to impossible. As rumors began surfacing in the Lebanese press that the U.N. tribunal was getting close to issuing indictments, Nasrallah began warning that he will simply not tolerate arrests of any of his people, the report said. That's no idle threat. Nasrallah operates a private militia considerably more powerful than the Lebanese army. And he also demanded that the U.N. tribunal, which is partially funded by Lebanon, be dissolved. In recent months, Nasrallah has taken to claiming that it was actually Israel that killed Hariri. CBC News quoted more than one former U.N. investigator as believing that should the telecommunications evidence ever be put before the Lebanese public, Nasrallah will acknowledge that his operatives were on the street when Hariri died, but claim that they were there chasing Israeli assassins. Nothing the U.N. has uncovered points remotely at Israel. Everything points at Hizbullah. But invoking Israel always gains traction in the Arab world. One formerly senior official with the commission says "considerable progress" was made during the most recent months of Bellemare's term in gathering evidence to support the telecommunications work. But, he concedes, the evidence is still largely circumstantial. That may be all the excuse that Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his political allies need to let this commission die. Saad Hariri and his supporters originally blamed Syria for the assassination. But they've been backpedaling in recent months. Hariri recently exonerated Syria, repudiating his own sworn statement to U.N. investigators in 2005. He has also called for an investigation of Nasrallah's claims that Israel killed his father. Detlev Mehlis, the first U.N. commissioner, told CBC News recently that it has always been obvious Syria ordered the Hariri hit. That it would use Hizbullah, its long-time proxy, he says, is only logical. The elder Hariri, Mehlis noted, had pushed not just for a Syrian withdrawal but also for the disarming of Hizbullah's feared militia. Scott Carpenter, a former Bush administration official dispatched by the White House to Lebanon in the wake of Hariri's death, also says the reality is obvious. But, he adds: "Is Hizbullah going to get away with it? Yes. Fewer travesties will be greater, but I don't see where the international will is to take this on, and I certainly don't see, absent that international will, how the Lebanese people can take it on."