BEIRUT, 20 March 2008 — The former chief UN investigator into the 2005 assassination of top Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri said yesterday he is confident that the truth eventually would be fully revealed, ruling out a cover-up in the case that has caused a political upheaval in Lebanon.
Hariri, a former prime minister, was killed with 22 others in a massive suicide truck bomb that targeted his motorcade in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005. Lebanon’s anti-Syrian factions have blamed Syria which has denied involvement in the killing.
“I am convinced that in the end whenever the end will come, we will know the whole truth down to each and every detail,” German Judge Detlev Mehlis said in an interview with the private Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation television.
“I think each and everyone on the Security Council wants to know the truth, wants people to be identified and put to trial. I think a cover-up is totally impossible,” he said, speaking in English.
Mehlis, a former German prosecutor who headed the UN commission probing Hariri’s assassination for about nine months in 2005 and early 2006, said the trial of suspects in the killing might take years before the real perpetrators are identified and jailed.
“It (trial) may take years ... It may take some time but in the end it will work out and the people who did this will end up in jail. I am convinced,” he said.
In his first interim report in 2006, Mehlis had said the killing’s complexity suggested the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services played a role in Hariri’s assassination. But Mehlis’ successor, Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, has not echoed his view, saying in one of his reports last year that it was not his mandate “to confirm or not confirm the opinion of my predecessor.”
Four Lebanese generals, security chiefs known for their Syrian sympathies, have been under arrest since August 2005 accused of involvement in Hariri’s killing. Mehlis also implicated Brig. Gen. Assaf Shawkat, Syria’s military intelligence chief and the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Lebanon’s anti-Syrian factions praised Mehlis’ report, but Syria rejected it as “politicized” and not based on evidence.
The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority has accused its neighbor of responsibility for Hariri’s assassination and a string of bombings that have targeted other politicians in the past three years. Damascus has denied involvement in any of these killings.
International pressure and huge protests in Lebanon following Hariri’s assassination prompted Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon after a 29-year presence.
Families of the four detained generals and Syria’s Lebanese allies have repeatedly called for their release, saying their arrest was “illegal” and politically motivated.
But Mehlis defended the arrest of the four officers as “legally and fully justified.” “Upon suggestions of my investigators, I recommended to the Lebanese authorities to put these four officers into provisional detention because we had strong indications that they were about to leave the country,” Mehlis said.
“We had indications that they were actively involved with the murder. So we felt to suggest to put them into provisional detention to have them available.”
Yet, Mehlis said: “We always pointed out that until these persons were sentenced by a tribunal, they have to be considered as being innocent.”
The interview was conducted at Mehlis’ office in Berlin by May Chidiac, a prominent anchorwoman of the leading TV station LBC, who lost an arm and a leg from a bomb placed under her car in September 2005.
Mehlis said he refused UN demands to extend his mandate after he was informed of “serious threats” to his life.
Asked if his successor Brammertz had made progress in the ongoing investigation, Mehlis said he didn’t see “much details” or “contradictory statements” in the following reports.
In his last report in December before handing over the investigation commission to former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, Brammertz said he was more confident than ever that those allegedly involved in the killing would be brought before a tribunal to face justice.
A deeply divided UN Security Council voted last May to create an international tribunal to try suspects in Hariri’s assassination after the Lebanese Parliament was unable to agree on the proposal.
The proposed tribunal, which has yet to be established, has created deep divisions in Lebanon and fueled criticism from Syria and Hezbollah.
UN experts are assisting Lebanese authorities in their investigations of Hariri’s assassination and of 19 other assassinations and bombings.
