BEIRUT: A senior official from state-owned telecoms company Ogero took to the stand at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Wednesday to give testimony into call log data used investigate the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Toufic Chebaro, Ogero’s director of Information Technology, testified remotely before The Hague court.
Defense counselor Chad Mair, who represents Salim Jamil Ayyash, one of the five defendants in the case, attempted to interrogate possible flaws in the original investigation that used call records to identify suspects.
Mair questioned Chebaro on Ogero’s role after the investigation called upon the Telecommunications Ministry to hand over phone records of the accused between Sept. 2004 and Dec. 2005.
Chebaro is the third consecutive Ogero employee to testify in front of the STL this week.
“We, as Information Technology [Directorate] do not deal with the data itself ... to my knowledge, nothing in particular was requested from [the IT department] to support the [investigation request],” Chebaro told the defense.
“The [call data records] are extracted from the switches and are sent through the internet to the [third party] but we are not involved at all in the operation, if everything goes well there is no intervention,” the witness added. “If there is a problem in the network, we work to make sure the call data records go where they need to be reached.”
Explained by a witness earlier in the week, the switches are the location in which the call data records are stored. Yet, the information is not synchronized across the whole Ogero network.
Chebaro continued to explain that the raw data of phone records are sent through a series of departments in Ogero. Each department plays a role in transmitting the data.
Both cellular and land line evidence has continued to be key evidence for the STL trial. The prosecution has alleged that the records frame the five defendants accused of carrying out the 2005 bombing.
Yet, seven years after the official opening of the STL, it also remains the most contested part of the trial.
“The [presentation of] cellular evidence in the assassination of Rafik Hariri is unarguably the most complicated part of the investigation,” Trial Chamber President Judge David Re said in a lengthy monologue following the dismissal of the witness.
Re added that the upcoming discussion of cellular evidence by Gary Platt, an expert investigator in covert cellular networks, would be vital in understanding the big picture of the prosecution’s evidence thus far.
Defense counselor Chad Mair, who represents Salim Jamil Ayyash, one of the five defendants in the case, attempted to interrogate possible flaws in the original investigation that used call records to identify suspects.
Mair questioned Chebaro on Ogero’s role after the investigation called upon the Telecommunications Ministry to hand over phone records of the accused between Sept. 2004 and Dec. 2005.
Chebaro is the third consecutive Ogero employee to testify in front of the STL this week.
“We, as Information Technology [Directorate] do not deal with the data itself ... to my knowledge, nothing in particular was requested from [the IT department] to support the [investigation request],” Chebaro told the defense.
“The [call data records] are extracted from the switches and are sent through the internet to the [third party] but we are not involved at all in the operation, if everything goes well there is no intervention,” the witness added. “If there is a problem in the network, we work to make sure the call data records go where they need to be reached.”
Explained by a witness earlier in the week, the switches are the location in which the call data records are stored. Yet, the information is not synchronized across the whole Ogero network.
Chebaro continued to explain that the raw data of phone records are sent through a series of departments in Ogero. Each department plays a role in transmitting the data.
Both cellular and land line evidence has continued to be key evidence for the STL trial. The prosecution has alleged that the records frame the five defendants accused of carrying out the 2005 bombing.
Yet, seven years after the official opening of the STL, it also remains the most contested part of the trial.
“The [presentation of] cellular evidence in the assassination of Rafik Hariri is unarguably the most complicated part of the investigation,” Trial Chamber President Judge David Re said in a lengthy monologue following the dismissal of the witness.
Re added that the upcoming discussion of cellular evidence by Gary Platt, an expert investigator in covert cellular networks, would be vital in understanding the big picture of the prosecution’s evidence thus far.
Source & Link : The Daily Star
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