Syria Today | UN-backed tribunal says it is close to identifying Hariri suicide bomber

UN-backed tribunal says it is close to identifying Hariri suicide bomber

UN officials investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced they are getting closer to identifying the suicide bomber behind the killing in a report issued on March 6.

The report, the first to be issued by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon since it opened in March 2009, said prosecutors had “made significant progress towards building a case which will bring the perpetrators [of the attack] to justice”. More specifically, it stated that investigators are getting closer to identifying the suspected suicide bomber by “narrowing down the individual’s geographic origin and partially reconstructing the individual’s face”.

Hariri was killed in a massive car bomb attack on the Beirut seafront in February 2005. Syria was accused of being behind the assassination, an allegation it has always denied.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Kuwait on March 7, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of the slain prime minister, said the report gave him hope that his father’s killers would be identified.

“The report shows that the tribunal needs more time to reach the truth and the Lebanese government and people should wait,” he said.

In other news related to the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Lebanese Court of Cessation rejected a summons issued by the Syrian judiciary for 25 Lebanese politicians, MPs, ministers, politicians and security officials, the Daily Star newspaper reported on March 8. Former Lebanese security chief and suspect in the Hariri assassination Jamil al-Sayyed has accused the figures of falsely testifying against him.

Sayyed launched the lawsuit from Damascus in October 2009. He and three other generals were held in detention over the assassination for four years before being set free by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in April 2009 on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to indict them.

The Lebanese judiciary rejected the summons, saying it contradicted Lebanese laws and sovereignty.