Phone Records Link Hezbollah to Rafik Hariri Assassination

(Nov. 22) -- The Canadian Broadcast Corp. has conducted an investigation into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and concludes that phone records implicate Hezbollah in the attack. The CBC draws on sources involved with or privy to details of an ongoing investigation by the United Nations, which is expected to hand down indictments against Hezbollah members by the end of the year.

"According to a phone analysis by Lebanese and U.N. investigators, the records suggest that Hezbollah officials were in frequent contact with the owners of the cell phones that were allegedly used to coordinate the bomb detonation that killed Hariri," reports Haaretz. The CBC faults U.N. investigators for losing key phone records and for failing to protect a Lebanese witness who was killed after assisting the U.N.

Hezbollah has denied any involvement and has threatened to aggressively move against the Lebanese government, tenuously led by Hariri's son at the moment, should any of its members be implicated in the assassination. Initial scrutiny had focused on Syria, a path of inquiry that was lent additional credence when Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, Damascus' top intelligence man in Lebanon, committed suicide in 2005 shortly before the U.N. released its initial report on the assassination.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he won't allow any of the group's members to be arrested.

"In a televised speech on Nov. 11, Nasrallah, who has denied that his group was involved in Hariri's killing, vowed to 'cut off the hand' that tries to arrest any Hizbullah fighter named in the indictment," reports Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper.

Read more at CBC.

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