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Factbox: Investigation into Hariri assassination

29 October 2010 21:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has urged all Lebanese to boycott an international investigation into the 2005 assassination of statesman Rafik al-Hariri, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The U.N.-backed investigation is expected to indict members of Nasrallah’s militant Shi’ite group, part of a fragile unity government, over the killing.
Ahead of the indictments, Hezbollah has called on Sunni Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, Rafik’s son, to repudiate the tribunal and the escalating tensions over the investigation risk plunging Lebanon into sectarian conflict.
Here is some background on the investigation:
POINTING AT SYRIA?
Six months after the February 14, 2005, bombing of Hariri’s convoy, four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals were arrested at the request of U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis.
In a report Mehlis delivered to the U.N. Security Council in October 2005, preliminary findings implicated high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese officials.
Syria, which withdrew military forces from Lebanon after an international outcry over Hariri’s killing, denied any role. The generals were released last year after the tribunal said there was not sufficient evidence to indict them.
Recent prosecution reports have been more circumspect and diplomats now expect Hezbollah members, rather than Syrian officials, to be indicted. Saad al-Hariri, who had blamed Syria for his father’s death, retracted the accusation in September.
SLOW PROGRESS
Mehlis was replaced in early 2006. Progress since then has been slow and the investigation has suffered from resignations of several key personnel.
The Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a hybrid court with Lebanese and international judges, was formally set up last year to try any suspects in the killing.
Although all Lebanese political rivals approved establishing the tribunal, Shi’ite ministers and their allies disagreed with the extent of its mandate and resigned from the government in November 2006, triggering a prolonged political standoff.
Lebanon provides 49 percent of the tribunal’s funding, but the political deadlock over the investigation is holding up approval for 2011 financing.
ACCUSATIONS OF BIAS
The tribunal and the U.N. investigation which preceded it have had to fend off accusations that the investigators relied on fabricated testimony when they first pointed a finger toward Damascus.
Opponents of the tribunal want several witnesses whose evidence has been called into question to face trial in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, which adamantly denies involvement in Hariri’s killing, has also said that Israel may have manipulated telephone records to falsely implicate the Shi’ite movement.
Nasrallah has accused the tribunal of being an "Israeli project," and showed intercepted Israeli aerial reconnaissance footage which he said showed Israel may have killed Hariri.
Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare insisted in a rare media interview last month that the investigation was not politicized.
INDICTMENTS
Bellemare said in the interview he was optimistic he would file indictments by the end of the year, but that timetable may be slipping. One Lebanese official said this week a more likely timeframe was February or March.
With indictments looming, Hezbollah has called on Hariri to repudiate the tribunal publicly and has also sought to discredit the investigation -- most recently when investigators sought information on women patients at a medical clinic this week.