Syria is now off the hook officially for any blame over the Rafik Hariri assassination.
Lebanon's prime minister, and son of the former slaim PM, now says he was wrong to accuse Syria of the 2005 assassination of his father, and twenty two others.
At the time of the murder international investigators insisted no terrorist group would have been capable of such a plot, it had to be the work of a sovereign state intelligence service. The U.S. and Israel pointed the finger at Syria and the assassination became a catalyst for the eviction of Syrian troops and intelligence agents.
Hariri Jnr., was heavily lobbied by the United States to join the fray and he quickly became a vocal critic of the Syrian regime. Now he says it was a political decision.
“This was a political accusation, and this political accusation has ended,” Saad Hariri told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper on Monday.
Relations between Hariri's government and Syria have been thawing for several months, particularly after a number of high-ranking pro-Syrian Lebanese military and intelligence services officers were released by the UN Tribunal investigating the Hariri assassination. The men had been held in prison for three years pending trial before a judge, at the request of the tribunal prosecutor ordered the officers' release - because the evidence against them had been falsified.
Since December, Hariri Jnr. has visted Damascus five times.
It is all a far cry from the early days of the UN tribunal and its first Germany's Detlev Mehlis, who after a very short investigation had concluded Syria was responsible for Hariri's death.
Mehlis has long been replaced, as has his successor, as the tribunal continues its work. Speculation has been rife in recent months the tribunal will charge members of Hezbollah, however Hezbollah has countered the speculation by accusing Israel of being behind the assassination.
More than 150 Israeli spies have been arrested by Lebanese authorities in the past two years, many of them former employees of the country's main telecommunications companies. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said recently the UN tribunal should interrogate these spies as telephone company records form the basis of a large part of the evidence gathered by the tribunal.
While speculation continues about the Hariri assassination and the perpetrators of the heinous crime, the UN should launch an investigation into how it's tribunal was corrupted into concluding Syria was responsible. What has become clear is that several witnesses falsely accused several people, including those detained for more than 3 years, of actions they did not do. There appears to have been a chronic effort to lay the blame on Syria.
As a direct result of the fall-out of the assassination and the blame falling on Syria, that country's thirty year presence in Lebanon ended, and within weeks of that occurring Israel unleashed a bloody and deadly invasion of Lebanon.
Those who provided false testimony, and those who fabricated evidence, should be brought to account.
If the motivation of assassinating a former Lebanese prime minister and 22 other people was solely to divide Lebanon, and lay the blame on Syria then the goals of the perpetrators were surely achieved. The world, took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Unfortunately it is unlikely they will now seek to root out those perpetrators with the same zest they embraced their attack on Syria.
It will probably be left to Lebanon to pursue and prosecute the wrongdoers, as local militant group Hezbollah has hinted.
“All parties seem to agree false witnesses misled investigations and led to an internal crisis and harmed Lebanese-Syrian ties during the past five years,” Hezbollah’s official in south Lebanon Nabil Qaouk said Tuesday. “Thus it is our national and moral responsibility to put on trial those false witnesses, those who stand behind them and their operators as a step to resolve the Lebanese crisis because some still insist on protecting false witnesses to protect higher security, political and judicial officials behind them.”
For too long major incidents such as the Hariri murder, and other terrorist attacks, even 9/11, have been too quickly blamed on groups, or countries, without any real investigation, often to justify political goals. It is refreshing to hear Saad Hariri admit his part in accusing Syria of his father's death was political.
