Bellemare still believes 'political' issues spurred Hariri killing

by **Admin** Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:43 am

The
UN commission investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik
Hariri still believes "political motivation" spurred his killing, and
investigators have recently unearthed "evidence" of the network that
carried out his assassination, said commission chief Daniel Bellemare
in his report to the UN Security Council Tuesday.

Bellemare,
who took over the investigation on January 1, said he wanted to
"clarify" new developments in the case, after the commission's March 28
report said a "criminal network" stood behind Hariri's killing, a
phrase which provoked rampant speculation that the investigation's
direction had changed.

"The
direction of the investigation has NOT changed, and the commission is
still investigating crimes that are politically motivated," Bellemare
wrote in his report to the UN Security Council, the first by the
Canadian prosecutor since replacing Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz
as head of the Independent International Investigation Commission.
"While previous reports have referred to the hypothesis of a network,
what is new this time is that we now have the evidence of the existence
of such a network and of its links."

Former
commission head Detlev Mehlis had made comments implicating Syria in
the February 2005 car bombing on Beirut's seafront that killed Hariri
and 22 others, while Damascus has long denied any involvement in the
assassination and has said Syria would not allow its citizens to appear
before the prospective UN tribunal to try suspects in the crime.
Hariri's assassination sparked mass protests in Lebanon which led to
the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after 29 years.

Bellemare
also said the commission would stand up to any attempts to exert
political influence over the investigation, one week after Syrian
Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said the tribunal - where Bellemare will
serve as prosecutor - had been used as a political tool against
Damascus. Moallem told ANB television on March 31 that Syria had
received and rejected "bargain offers" to terminate the court in
exchange for expediting a presidential election in Lebanon.

"The
commission will yield to no pressure, political or otherwise, and the
identification of suspects will be based on sound legal standards
supported by concrete evidence," the probe-commission chief said.

Bellemare
also addressed the length of the investigation, requesting that the
Security Council extend the commission's mandate beyond its June 15
term. He did not specify when he would submit indictments to the
nascent tribunal, saying only that the indictments should not lag
behind the establishment of the tribunal. UN chief Ban Ki-moon,
meanwhile, has said that the tribunal will not officially come into
being until the investigation makes "sufficient headway," while Mehlis
in an interview earlier this year questioned how much progress
Brammertz had made in his two years at the helm of the commission.

"I
will only state that the filing of eventual indictments will not be
immediate after the establishment of the tribunal," Bellemare said. "No
one can predict or dictate how long this process will take ... Ideally,
the time between the establishment of the operations of the tribunal
and the eventual filing of indictments should be as short as possible.

"Any illusion of immediacy must be dispelled. Our progress is neither slow nor immediate: It is deliberate."
The
commission's next steps will be to continue to collect more evidence on
the network behind Hariri's killing, Bellemare added. The investigation
has gathered evidence that the "criminal network" existed before
Hariri's killing, conducted surveillance of the former five-time
premier, was operative on the day of the assassination and that parts
of the network continued to function after the crime, Bellemare said.

The
commission had previously established that a suicide bomber had set off
the nearly 1 ton of explosives that killed Hariri. Bellemare did not
mention witnesses, but France said Tuesday that Syrian national
Mohammad Zuhair Siddiq, apparently a key witness, had "disappeared"
while under close watch in France.

"I'm sorry for that, and I don't know the conditions for his disappearance," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

Bellemare
also did not evaluate the cooperation the commission has received from
nations outside Lebanon, saying only that countries could contact
investigators and did not need to wait for requests for assistance.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was
quoted in Syria's Al-Thawra newspaper as saying Damascus "has
cooperated in a positive manner with the international investigation."

In
his report to the Security Council, Bellemare did prod the Lebanese
authorities to ask more quickly for help in their investigations into
political violence. In addition to the Hariri killing, the commission
is also participating in looking into 19 other assassinations and
incidents of violence believed to be politically motivated.

"The
commission would like to note, however, that the sooner its assistance
is requested [by the Lebanese], the more likely this technical
assistance can be meaningful," Bellemare said.

He
noted that the commission's workload continues to increase as the
assassinations plaguing Lebanon fail to subside, but he said the
investigators were determined to resolve the crimes and end the cycle
of political violence. The commission has taken on the recent
assassinations of Lebanese Armed Forces operations head General
Francois al-Hajj on December 13, 2007, and terrorism investigator and
Internal Security Forces Major Wissam Eid on January 25 of this year.

"Each
attack increases the resolve of the men and women of the more than 60
countries that have answered the call for help and who are fully
committed to bringing an end to impunity in Lebanon," Bellemare said.
"Any unnecessary delay in finding the truth and bringing the
perpetrators to justice must be avoided.

"With
the continued assistance of [UN] member states and the ongoing support
of the Lebanese authorities, I can assure you that no effort will be
spared to expedite the process as much as is humanly possible."