iloubnan - Lebanon ex-minister blames Hezbollah for attempted murder - July 01, 2011

A former Lebanese minister who survived a 2005 bombing on Thursday blamed Hezbollah for the attack, speaking shortly after a UN court indicted members of the group for the murder of ex-premier 
Rafiq Hariri. 

"I have had doubts for a long time that a Hezbollah cell was involved in the attempt on my life, and I took the matter up with Hezbollah MPs who all denied it," Elias al-Murr, a former defence minister and deputy prime 
minister, told Lebanese television channel LBC. 

Murr said there was evidence that the same Hezbollah cell had executed both the Beirut bombing that killed Hariri and the July 2005 bombing that targeted his car in a suburb east of the capital. 

He did not give further details. His comments came hours after the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon issued its indictment in the February 14, 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. The indictment is widely expected to implicate members of Lebanon's Shiite militant Hezbollah. 

The Hague-based tribunal also handed Lebanese prosecutor general Said Mirza arrest warrants for four Lebanese but did not disclose their identities. LBC has reported the four suspects targeted by the arrest warrants are members of Hezbollah and include Mustafa Badreddine, brother-in-law of top operative Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a 2008 bombing in Damascus. 

Badreddine was said to have supervised the Hariri assassination. He had previously been arrested in Kuwait for planning to bomb the US embassy, LBC reported. 

Also among the four is Salim Ayyash, a Hezbollah member who holds US citizenship and headed the cell that carried out the bombing, according to LBC. 

Hezbollah officials contacted by AFP declined to comment.