Hizbollah leader claims proof Israel killed Lebanese PM in 2005

BEIRUT // Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last night unveiled what he said was evidence that Israel carried out the 2005 assassination in Beirut of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, pledging to "tell the story my way". Utilising internal interrogation videos and revealing what would normally be private operational details, Mr Nasrallah wove a complex tale that began with accounts of traitors in the early 1990s and ended with a plot to set up Hizbollah operatives in the Hariri killing. It was an uncharacteristically detailed and frank briefing.

Hariri was killed, along with 21 others, when a lorry bomb was detonated as his motorcade drove near Beirut's corniche on Valentine's Day. UN investigators later said the bomb was the equivalent of around 1,000kg of TNT. A UN tribunal was established five years ago to prosecute those responsible for the killing. It has yet to hand down any indictments. The allegation had been expected. Last week at a rally to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel, Mr Nasrallah announced he would accuse Israel of committing the crime. He promised to furnish evidence in the form of "films, documents and data".

"I will answer all those who told us 'You accuse Israel, then give evidences'. I will present these evidences to you with facts and figures," Mr Nasrallah said then. Before the speech yesterday, a spokesman for Hizbollah said the briefing "should not be missed for anything."The assassination has been under investigation by the UN for several years and indictments are expected within months. It had been widely believed that investigators were focusing on the Syrian regime as likely culprits, but the spotlight has shifted to Hizbollah.

Those suspicions were heightened last month after Mr Nasrallah announced he expected "rogue elements" of his party to be accused in the plot. Since then, Mr Nasrallah has waged a public-relations assault on the work of the tribunal, seeking, analysts say, to undermine its legitimacy by drawing attention to early witnesses who subsequently retracted their stories and to link it to a widening spy scandal here.

In the past two years, about 150 individuals have been accused of spying for Israel, including a gamut of private citizens, retired military officials and top employees in the internet and mobile phone companies. Much of the tribunal's work reportedly relied on telecommunications data. "It is now clear beyond any doubt that there is total Israeli control over the telecoms sector," Mr Nasrallah said last month.

A bitter debate has broken out over Mr Nasrallah's accusations. Officials in the March 14 coalition, led by Mr Hariri's son and the current prime minister Saad Hariri, yesterday faulted Mr Nasrallah for his tactics. They offered no indication they would shift their stances in light of whatever Mr Nasrallah said in his speech. "He says he has this proof that Israel did it," said Samir Franjieh, a March 14 former member of parliament and party elder. "Then why didn't he give this proof before?"

Meanwhile, Omar Nashabe, the justice editor at the pro-opposition newspaper Al Akhbar, which recently published a seven-part series on the tribunal's "false witnesses," said that the supposed cracks in the tribunal are worth taking seriously. The March 14 rebuttals, he said, are mere political posturing. "Who are these people who are saying this about Hassan Nasrallah? What do they know? What are their qualifications? How can they actually talk about these things when they spent five years accusing Syria and now they sleep in the bed of [Syrian President] Bashar Assad?" Mr Nashabe wrote.

Over the weekend, an adviser in the interior ministry, which is overseeing the police investigation into alleged Israeli spy rings, did not dismiss Mr Nasrallah's claims, but said the ministry was taking a cautious approach to the allegations. "Let us wait and see what sort of evidence [Mr Nasrallah] offers," the adviser said, on the condition of anonymity. "I'm sure that he has something to say, but let's let the tribunal make the decision about the value of it."

Mr Nasrallah's attacks on the tribunal, together with reports of alleged spy arrests, have roiled the capital. Last week, a top official in the Free Patriot Movement (FPM), a Christian party allied with Hizbollah, was detained on suspicion of spying. A source close to the investigation told Agence France-Presse last week that the official, a retired general named Fayes Karam, had confessed. Alain Aoun, an FPM member of parliament, confirmed that the party was taken aback by the charges, but said they did not yet accept their validity. He also said the episode would have no impact on FPM's alliance with Hizbollah.

"This is a party where you could have many political differences but we never thought something like this could happen," Mr Aoun said. "If it's confirmed, it will be only individual involvement, not collective involvement, so it won't have any impact on the [Hizbollah-FPM] relationship." foreign.desk@thenational.ae