The chief investigator for the U.N. commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said the inquiry is developing new leads and “persons of interest.” Serge Brammertz, the Belgian prosecutor charged with investigating the assassination, issued his final report to the U.N. Security Council stating the investigation has produced new information.
“The commission has also deepened and broadened its understanding of the possible involvement of a number of persons of interest, including persons who have recently been identified by the commission, who may have been involved in some aspects of the preparation and commission of the crime or who may have known that a plan to carry out the crime was being prepared,” Brammertz said.
Brammertz said “operational links may exist” between the Hariri perpetrators and 18 other assassinations in Lebanon. He said the most recent assassination of Lebanese parliamentarian Antoine Ghanem on Sept. 19, three days after he returned from an overseas visit, suggested the team of perpetrators were well equipped and operationally expedient. The Ghanem assassination and evidence from the Hariri probe confirms “that the perpetrators or groups of perpetrators had and still have advanced and extensive operational capacities available in Beirut.”
Rafik Hariri and 22 others were killed when a “likely” male suicide bomber detonated 3,960 pounds of explosives in a Mitsubishi Canter van on Feb. 14, 2005. Initial examinations suggested Syrian involvement and the involvement of Lebanese intelligence services, though Brammertz has not focused on that allegation since taking over the commission. The Brammertz report said Syrian cooperation “remains generally satisfactory.”
Brammertz said the supposed suicide bomber may have lived close to a military facility or a “conflict area or an area where weapons were used on a regular basis” due to “significant quantities of a specific type of lead” linked to military ammunition.
