BEIRUT: Analyst Andrew Fahey, formerly of Scotland Yard, returned to the stand at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Monday to give evidence on maps he created for prosecutors. The court has charged four members of Hezbollah with orchestrating the bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others on Feb. 14, 2005. The prosecution’s investigation has centered on closed networks of cellular phones they say were used to conduct surveillance of Hariri and plan the attack. The case hinges on a convincing attribution of these phones to defendants.
However the telecommunications data necessary to build the prosecution’s case is invariably complex. It has therefore put significant resources into what it calls the Electronic Presentation of Evidence, software that overlays information from phone records onto maps of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon.
The goal is to show how the movements of the phones correspond with other information, such as the alleged residences of the defendants, or the journeys taken by Hariri’s convoy in the weeks leading up to the attack.
Since November 2012, Fahey has been the project manager of the EPE software and has already appeared before the tribunal a number of times to defend the maps and the choices he made in their development. Once again Monday defense counselors probed discrepancies and gaps in the data on which the models were built.
Fahey himself offered corrections to several typographical errors that appeared in the published data, noting they did not change his evidence. The defense then pressed him on areas of the maps that show gaps in coverage, or where coverage appears to overlap. Many of the discrepancies derive from the multiple sets of data turned over to investigators by the networks.
Without an authoritative list of the locations of cellular masts and the orientation of their antennae Fahey has had to compare the data sets and determine whether the differences they contain are significant.
He has repeatedly contended that for the prosecution’s purposes they are not. “Where there have been differences, they’ve been corrected,” he told the court.
Fahey’s testimony was brief. Prosecutors spent much of the session entering records and statements into evidence, concluding the hearing early. Proceedings are scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
However the telecommunications data necessary to build the prosecution’s case is invariably complex. It has therefore put significant resources into what it calls the Electronic Presentation of Evidence, software that overlays information from phone records onto maps of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon.
The goal is to show how the movements of the phones correspond with other information, such as the alleged residences of the defendants, or the journeys taken by Hariri’s convoy in the weeks leading up to the attack.
Since November 2012, Fahey has been the project manager of the EPE software and has already appeared before the tribunal a number of times to defend the maps and the choices he made in their development. Once again Monday defense counselors probed discrepancies and gaps in the data on which the models were built.
Fahey himself offered corrections to several typographical errors that appeared in the published data, noting they did not change his evidence. The defense then pressed him on areas of the maps that show gaps in coverage, or where coverage appears to overlap. Many of the discrepancies derive from the multiple sets of data turned over to investigators by the networks.
Without an authoritative list of the locations of cellular masts and the orientation of their antennae Fahey has had to compare the data sets and determine whether the differences they contain are significant.
He has repeatedly contended that for the prosecution’s purposes they are not. “Where there have been differences, they’ve been corrected,” he told the court.
Fahey’s testimony was brief. Prosecutors spent much of the session entering records and statements into evidence, concluding the hearing early. Proceedings are scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
Source & Link : The Daily Star
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