60% of Lebanese Say STL Politicized, Unfair

23/08/2010 The "international for information" center at the Lebanese daily As-safir conducted a survey for the Lebanese public opinion over their stance of the International probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, their opinion concerning the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) and the documents submitted by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. The poll also asked about the side behind the assassination.

The survey, published on Monday, showed that 60% of Lebanese believe the international probe politicized, unfair and non-neutral, while 43% supported an amendment in the method and the style of the investigation to be more impartial and neutral. 17% called for a complete abolition of the STL.

55% viewed the documents submitted by Sayyed Nasrallah as convincing evidence of the suspicion of "Israel" in the Hariri assassination.

Five years and a half on the assassination, about half of the respondents (49%) said that they don’t want to accuse any side in the killing. 34% considered that ‘Israel’ was behind the assassination and 5% accused the CIA and Mossad.

Comparing this stance to previous stances we see a radical change in the distribution of charges. The proportion of people who accused the Syrian-Israeli intelligence dramatically declined. After it was 40%, it became about 3% while the proportion of those who accuse Israel significantly increased from about 11% to 34%.

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