Security Council OKs Hariri tribunal

NF Reporter · 11-21-2006, 08:51 PM

AP - The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday approved a tribunal to prosecute the suspected killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 14 others, ironically the same day another anti-Syrian politician was gunned down in Lebanon.

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08-03-2007, 06:14 AM

Fearless W standin' up for the lil' feller...

George Bush freezes Lebanon's enemies
Thursday 2nd August, 2007 American President George Bush has ordered a freeze on the U.S assets of anyone Washington accuses of undermining the Lebanese Government.

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Mr Bush has not identified those affected by the decree but he has imposed a U.S travel ban in June on Syrian officials.

Anyone judged as contributing to the breakdown of the rule of law in the country and those pushing to reassert Syrian control are included in the freeze. The order also extends to spouses and dependent children.

The U.S National Security Council says recent assaults by extremist groups on the Lebanese Army are signs of the threat, as are the June 13th assassination of Judge Walid Eido and news that Syria's allies in Lebanon may be preparing an alternate government.

George Bush freezes Lebanon's enemies

waltky · 11-23-2010, 12:57 AM

Hezbollah did it...

Evidence links Hezbollah to Hariri death
Sunday, November 21, 2010; A Lebanese police officer and U.N. investigators unearthed extensive circumstantial evidence implicating the Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, according to an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

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The U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission's findings are based on an elaborate examination of Lebanese phone records. They suggest Hezbollah officials communicated with the owners of cell phones allegedly used to coordinate the detonation that killed Hariri and 22 others as they traveled through downtown Beirut in an armed convoy, according to Lebanese and U.N. phone analysis obtained by CBC and shared with The Washington Post. The revelations are likely to add to speculation that a U.N. prosecutor plans to indict members of Hezbollah by the end of the year.

The work of the commission, whose mandate has expired, has been handed over the U.N. Special Tribunal, which will carry out prosecutions. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah - who claims Israel killed Hariri - has made it clear that the group will not accept the U.N.'s prosecution of its members. The CBC report says that the head of the U.N. tribunal, Daniel Bellemare, declined a request to comment, and other officials in his office did not respond to phone calls. A U.N. attorney warned the CBC that the organization would alert Canadian authorities that the news agency's had obtained privileged U.N. documents, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Post.

The latest findings mark a major development in an investigation that has played out for more than five years, and which initially had implicated Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials. In October 2005, the U.N.'s prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, a German, issued a report saying that Hariri's assassination "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security forces." Mehlis's successors, Serge Brammertz of Belgium and Bellemare, a former Canadian justice official, have revealed virtually none of their findings to the public, saying that the evidence will be presented in a court of law.

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