Hashem Osseiran
Witness testimonies during a hearing for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Wednesday laid out in detail how the assassins of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri forged documents to obtain SIM cards they would later use to stage the attack. Prosecutors admitted the testimonies of three out of eight witnesses whose ID cards were used to fraudulently to buy eight SIM cards used by the assassination team responsible for Hariri’s killing on Feb. 14, 2005.
In their statements, all eight witnesses, formally registered as the owners of the SIM cards, testified that they were not the actual users.
They had submitted their ID cards to make purchases at mobile shops in Tripoli before the attack, and the IDs were in turn used later to buy SIM cards used by the suspected assassins.
Retired military officer Jawdat Imad recounted that in December 2004, he had purchased a cell phone from a shop in Tripoli’s Qibbeh neighborhood, where he was asked to submit a photocopied version of his ID. The officer, who wasn’t allowed to use his own military ID, submitted his wife’s papers instead. Her ID was attached to an application form for one of eight SIM cards used by Hariri’s killers.
In his testimony, Imad said that he had never purchased the number attached to that SIM card, adding that personal information on the application form, such as his address, was incorrect. He also denied that the handwriting on the application was his.
The prosecution noted that one mobile phone shop in Tripoli’s Qibbeh neighborhood had submitted all eight fraudulent application forms to the alfa telecommunications company on Jan. 10, 2005, just over a month before the date of the assassination.
The eight SIM cards were in operation beginning in January 2005, and each ceased working two minutes before the attack.
The SIM cards were part of the so-called “red network” of telephones allegedly used to coordinate the attack.
Only one of the users of the SIMcards has been identified – the alleged leader of the assassination squad Salim Jamil Ayyash.
In a previous hearing, the prosecution alleged that the red network SIM cards were purchased and topped up with credit in Tripoli for the purpose of laying a false trail of responsibility for the attack, by suggesting that the perpetrators were based in Tripoli.
In his fourth and final day of testimony, former MP Ghattas Khoury, who claimed that not a single Lebanese security agency was immune to Syria’s influence, said that Hariri’s assassination could not have happened without the “connivance” of Lebanese security agencies.
Khoury said that security forces had “everyone under surveillance,” at the time of Hariri’s assassination. For this reason, he believed that security agencies had knowledge of the attack and also “allowed” the assassination to happen.
Khoury’s testimony is part of the “political evidence” being presented before the U.N.-backed tribunal tasked with prosecuting those responsible for killing Hariri and 21 others in the massive bombing.
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