A general view shows the site of the 2005 explosion, which killed former PM Rafik Hariri and 22 other victims. (AFP/Anwar Amro)
Telecommunications evidence gathered by Lebanese police and UN investigators “points overwhelmingly” to the fact that “an eight-member hit squad backed by Hezbollah was behind” former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination, CBC News reported on its website on Sunday.
The report cited “interviews with multiple sources from inside the UN inquiry and some of the commission's own records,” including “cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.”
According to the report, in late 2007, UN investigators obtained records of all phone calls made in Lebanon during 2005 and contracted the British firm FTS to analyze the data.
The analysis revealed an eight-phone network that had been “shadowing Hariri in the weeks prior to his death.”
Investigators then rediscovered a forgotten report filed by Lebanese police officer Wissam Eid in 2006. Eid had sifted through all phone calls made nearby the assassination and, by linking some numbers to victims or people with solid alibis, picked out by process of elimination what he believed were the murderer’s phones.
Although these phones were only used to call each other, he linked them to other networks through “co-location.” By observing that pairs of phones were consistently making calls at the same times and from the same locations, he determined that these were secondary phones carried by the same operatives using the first set.
Eid linked Hezbollah member Abd al-Majid al-Ghamloush to the case when the latter used one of these phones to call his girlfriend. This then led Eid to “Hezbollah operatives” Hussein and Mouin Khreis, “one of [whom] had actually been at the site of the blast,” CBC’s report said.
Eid also found connections to another set of phones that had communicated with the Great Prophet Hospital in the Dahiyeh – which the report called a Hezbollah “command center” – and also with phones issued by the Lebanese government.
CBC cited a government document obtained by investigators that identified some of these government-issued phones as belonging to Hezbollah members. The CBC report suggested that the phones could belong to Hezbollah politicians.
Eid was warned by Hezbollah that the phones he was tracing were part of a counter-espionage operation against the Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, according to the CBC report.
When they rediscovered Eid’s report in December 2007, skeptical UN experts met with him and became convinced his results were reliable. Eid met a second time with investigators, but was then assassinated the next day.
The UN commission obtained phone records from his assassination and determined that Eid’s killers had used radios rather than cellphones – implying that they were aware of the investigation’s direction, said CBC.
Investigators then became suspicious of Colonel Wissam al-Hassan, a liaison between the inquiry and the Internal Security Forces. Hassan was Eid’s boss and probably knew about the meetings with the UN inquiry. Hassan had also been Hariri’s head of security on the day of the assassination but claimed that he had not been in the convoy because he had an exam at the Lebanese University.
Investigators believed that Hassan lied about his alibi, CBC said. Although investigation chief at the time Serge Brammertz refused to let investigators confront him, they obtained phone records that showed he made 24 phone calls during the evening he claimed to have spent studying for the exam and also later made hundreds of calls to Hezbollah officials Hussein Khalil and Wafik Safa.
The report quotes investigators who believe that “Hezbollah infiltrated the commission and used Hassan in the process.” However, the report also described him as a “close ally” of Prime Minister Saad Hariri – son of the slain ex-premier – and quoted US officials saying that suspicion of Hassan demonstrates the UN inquiry’s incompetence.
According to CBC’s report, after late 2007 investigators were able to build up their own map of phone networks but faced difficulty linking numbers to individuals with non-circumstantial evidence. However, the investigators have managed to link some phones to individuals, the report said.
The commission did not ask Lebanese authorities for wiretaps because it feared that Hezbollah would find out, and Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Prosecutor-General Daniel Bellemare would not let investigators set up wiretaps on their own. Bellemare did seek aid from US intelligence but they refused him because, according to the report, they suspected leaks in the investigation and also disdained his flamboyance, “ordering in tailored clothes, boasting about his prosecutorial prowess, and designing a personal coat of arms.”
The report states that investigators have made “considerable progress” in 2010 but says evidence is still “largely circumstantial.”
Investigators believe that if the telecom evidence is made public, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will “acknowledge that his operatives were on the street when Hariri died, but claim that they were there chasing Israeli assassins,” the report also said.
The report cited “interviews with multiple sources from inside the UN inquiry and some of the commission's own records,” including “cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.”
According to the report, in late 2007, UN investigators obtained records of all phone calls made in Lebanon during 2005 and contracted the British firm FTS to analyze the data.
The analysis revealed an eight-phone network that had been “shadowing Hariri in the weeks prior to his death.”
Investigators then rediscovered a forgotten report filed by Lebanese police officer Wissam Eid in 2006. Eid had sifted through all phone calls made nearby the assassination and, by linking some numbers to victims or people with solid alibis, picked out by process of elimination what he believed were the murderer’s phones.
Although these phones were only used to call each other, he linked them to other networks through “co-location.” By observing that pairs of phones were consistently making calls at the same times and from the same locations, he determined that these were secondary phones carried by the same operatives using the first set.
Eid linked Hezbollah member Abd al-Majid al-Ghamloush to the case when the latter used one of these phones to call his girlfriend. This then led Eid to “Hezbollah operatives” Hussein and Mouin Khreis, “one of [whom] had actually been at the site of the blast,” CBC’s report said.
Eid also found connections to another set of phones that had communicated with the Great Prophet Hospital in the Dahiyeh – which the report called a Hezbollah “command center” – and also with phones issued by the Lebanese government.
CBC cited a government document obtained by investigators that identified some of these government-issued phones as belonging to Hezbollah members. The CBC report suggested that the phones could belong to Hezbollah politicians.
Eid was warned by Hezbollah that the phones he was tracing were part of a counter-espionage operation against the Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, according to the CBC report.
When they rediscovered Eid’s report in December 2007, skeptical UN experts met with him and became convinced his results were reliable. Eid met a second time with investigators, but was then assassinated the next day.
The UN commission obtained phone records from his assassination and determined that Eid’s killers had used radios rather than cellphones – implying that they were aware of the investigation’s direction, said CBC.
Investigators then became suspicious of Colonel Wissam al-Hassan, a liaison between the inquiry and the Internal Security Forces. Hassan was Eid’s boss and probably knew about the meetings with the UN inquiry. Hassan had also been Hariri’s head of security on the day of the assassination but claimed that he had not been in the convoy because he had an exam at the Lebanese University.
Investigators believed that Hassan lied about his alibi, CBC said. Although investigation chief at the time Serge Brammertz refused to let investigators confront him, they obtained phone records that showed he made 24 phone calls during the evening he claimed to have spent studying for the exam and also later made hundreds of calls to Hezbollah officials Hussein Khalil and Wafik Safa.
The report quotes investigators who believe that “Hezbollah infiltrated the commission and used Hassan in the process.” However, the report also described him as a “close ally” of Prime Minister Saad Hariri – son of the slain ex-premier – and quoted US officials saying that suspicion of Hassan demonstrates the UN inquiry’s incompetence.
According to CBC’s report, after late 2007 investigators were able to build up their own map of phone networks but faced difficulty linking numbers to individuals with non-circumstantial evidence. However, the investigators have managed to link some phones to individuals, the report said.
The commission did not ask Lebanese authorities for wiretaps because it feared that Hezbollah would find out, and Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Prosecutor-General Daniel Bellemare would not let investigators set up wiretaps on their own. Bellemare did seek aid from US intelligence but they refused him because, according to the report, they suspected leaks in the investigation and also disdained his flamboyance, “ordering in tailored clothes, boasting about his prosecutorial prowess, and designing a personal coat of arms.”
The report states that investigators have made “considerable progress” in 2010 but says evidence is still “largely circumstantial.”
Investigators believe that if the telecom evidence is made public, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will “acknowledge that his operatives were on the street when Hariri died, but claim that they were there chasing Israeli assassins,” the report also said.
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