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Posted by G, Z, & or B at 6:36 PM"....The differences between Malbrunot's article and Follath's are essential. In his article, Malbrunot cited "someone close to Saad Hariri", as well as "a source close to the [Internal Security Forces]" ... Significantly, however, the Hariri source did not believe that Hizbullah had carried out the Hariri assassination on its own initiative. "Who had the capacity to bring the equivalent of 1,200 kilos of TNT into Lebanon", the source asked, before answering: "Syria, a Lebanese security service working with it, and Hizbullah." The direction of Malbrunot's article was that the operation was Syrian, but that Hizbullah may have somehow been brought into it.
Follath's informants appear to be different. He says his information comes from sources "close to the tribunal and [was] verified by examining internal documents." In other words Follath's source appears not to be an employee of the tribunal, but someone who has contacts with it and access to documents the tribunal is working with. That leads to suspicion that the sources are Lebanese who, to corroborate their information, showed Follath Lebanese documents from, or on, the Eid investigation, copies of which must also be in the possession of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon - hence the vague formulation "internal documents."
Who would leak such documents, and why, remains to be seen. It seems improbable that this was done by a pro-Hariri source to affect Lebanon's upcoming elections. After spending four years accusing Syria, the Hariri camp is not about to exonerate Damascus for uncertain electoral gains. The broader conclusions reached by Follath are his own, however, and are poorly argued. Nothing in his piece allows him to make the jump and push the burden of responsibility for the killing on Hizbullah....
If Hizbullah did plan and execute the attack,... it would have taken such action without Syrian direction to do so - direction that only Bashar Assad, given the centralized nature of Syria's regime, would have signed off on.
Follath provides motives for the assassination that are laughable. He says that Hizbullah got rid of Hariri because his "growing popularity .....close ties to the West and to moderate Arab regimes, as well as "an opulent lifestyle, and a membership in the competing Sunni faith."
This is nonsense. Those who had an overriding motive to kill Hariri were the Syrians, because ... of Resolution 1559 ...
Follath, intentionally or unintentionally, is being used to draw the light away from Syria by casting it on Hizbullah. ...
These questions will continue to remain unanswered, and the tribunal process will continue to be open to manipulation, for as long as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon does not come out with a formal accusation. We are witnessing the consequences of a slipshod UN investigation since 2006. The prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, may have lost control of his case, and those who leaked to Der Spiegel could well be pushing for its complete collapse."
Der Spiegel Report Published on Syriatruth.Net 6 Months Ago
Hanan Awarekeh Readers Number : 201
26/05/2009 The report published by the German magazine Der Spiegel days ago concerning an alleged "involvement" of Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was not a scoop since the Syriatruth.net electronic site published the same information six months ago.
This site, run by the Syrian opposition figure who lives in France, Nizar Nayyouf, has attributed its information to a high-ranking judicial source in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) as Der Spiegel has exactly done.
The Syriatruth.net has predicted since the 24th of December 2008 that the STL would release the four Lebanese officers right after it assumes the authority from the Lebanese judiciary. The report also said that the indictment would point out to Hezbollah figures and it mentioned the same names of Der Spiegel’s. The site also attributed its information to what it described as “a chief legal officer” at the STL. Moreover, it used the term “Hezbollah special forces” and reported the name of Hezbollah military commander martyr Imad Moghniyyeh (Hajj Redwan who was assassinated in February 2008)… literally copied by the German magazine.
Syriatruth.net claimed that "when the International Tribunal starts next March" (last March), it would accuse Hezbollah, its military commander martyr Moghniyyeh and figures from the “resistance party’s special forces”.
The site also presented the same data, copied by Spiegel, concerning the phone links issue and the names of the first and second sections of the report as it called them “the first circle of hell and the second”, and it also mentioned the same names of Hezbollah figures.
If Der Spiegel’s report was not published after the release of the four officers, the Abdel Aal brothers and Ibrahim Jarjoura, it would have published what the site reported on 24 December 2008 when it quoted a high-ranking French diplomatic source as saying that that those detainees would be released, adding that that probe committee has proved that the four officers’ detention was nothing but “a political- intelligence trap”.
The only difference between the two reports, apart from the six-month difference in timing, is that the Spiegel’s report focused on the allegations’ repercussions on the Lebanese parliamentary elections while the Syriatruth.net report promoted the defamation of Hezbollah’s image among the public opinion especially that Israeli has exploited these claims and started to promote them as well.
"...shortly after Hariri's assassination, a seniorIsraeli MI official submitted a report that blamed Hezbollah rather than Syria for the killing..."
"..The German newspaper report presumably did not take Israel by complete surprise. Although Israeli intelligence shared the UN's initial assessment that Syria was behind Hariri's murder, there were dissenting views. A document submitted to the chief of Military Intelligence in late 2001, more than three years before the murder, predicted that Hariri might be murdered by Hezbollah. And shortly after the assassination, a senior MI official submitted a minority opinion that blamed Hezbollah rather than Syria for the killing. .."
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