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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font size=3>_______________<br>
The mystery of Mr Lebanon's murder<br>
After the assassination of Rafik Hariri, his vehicles were taken from the
scene on the orders of a former aide. And now, reports Robert Fisk, many
believe the missing cars may hold the key to the killing<br>
17 March 2005 <br><br>
<br>
Now here's a strange story from Beirut. Strange, because it is one of
fear and suspicion about Rafik Hariri's murder on 14 February; stranger
still because - although almost everyone in Beirut knows the story -much
of it has not been published in Lebanon.<br><br>
It involves a man called Ali Salah Haj and Hariri himself - and the
mysterious decision to move the most vital evidence of his murder from
the scene of the crime. Some say it is all a mistake, the result of
inexperience or ignorance. Others believe it holds the key to how the
former billionaire prime minister was murdered in a bombing that cost the
lives of 18 other innocents.<br><br>
It all begins in the late 1990s when Hariri was prime minister. He lived
in a palace of pre-stressed concrete in the Beirut suburb of Qoreitem and
travelled everywhere with a government-supplied team of escorts from
Lebanon's Internal Security Force.<br><br>
Of the 40 men regularly on his team, Hariri regularly drove with one of
its senior officers, a man he liked, the heavily mustachioed Ali Haj.
"Things were quite normal," one of Hariri's closest associates
now says, "until Sheikh Rafik found that the Syrians seemed to know
everything he was saying in his car. People thought he must be bugged or
that there was a tap on his phone. And after a while, he decided that Ali
Haj might be telling the Syrians what he was saying."<br><br>
In a land such as Lebanon - where everyone listens to everyone else
(Hariri had his own security informants) - that had to be
investigated.<br><br>
"So he told Ali Haj something very specific that the Syrians
wouldn't like," the family associate says. "And, within minutes
of meeting a Syrian official that day, the very same matter was raised
with him. That day, Sheikh Rafik asked another security man to ride with
him. Ali Haj was relegated to another car."<br><br>
Within a short time, Ali Haj was reassigned - to a Lebanese intelligence
post in the Bekaa valley where he dealt regularly with Brigadier General
Rustum Ghazale, the head of Syrian military intelligence in
Lebanon.<br><br>
Now we flash forward to 14 February 2005. Hariri's armoured motorcade,
struck by a bomb of around 600kg, lies blazing in the narrow road beside
the St George Hotel on the Beirut Corniche. The vehicles, pitted with
shrapnel holes, perhaps bearing traces of the explosives, formed a
pattern which showed how the bomb scattered the cars - as well as the
order in which the convoy was travelling.<br><br>
But within hours - although every other burning car was left intact
beside the highway - Hariri's vehicles had disappeared. The decision was
taken by the man who is now head of the Syrian-controlled Lebanese
Internal Security Force, a certain Brigadier General Ali Salah
Haj.<br><br>
He ordered that the wreckage should be removed from the scene of the
crime - and this, remember, was the location of the murder of the most
important figure in the history of independent Lebanon - and taken away
on trucks to the Lebanese Charles Helou army barracks. Where they remain
to this day.<br><br>
Ali Haj was among the many thousands of mourners who later came to pay
their respects to the Hariri family. Witnesses later recorded he was
given a frosty reception. Ghenna Hariri, the young daughter of Hariri's
sister Bahiya, a Lebanese MP in the southern city of Sidon, greeted him
with the words: "Your place is not here." When he offered his
hand to Hariri's widow Nazek - who now wears her late husband's wedding
ring on a chain round her neck - she touched her chest modestly rather
than take Ali Haj's hand.<br><br>
In a country where everyone believes in the "moamara" - the
Plot - it is essential not to point the finger. No one has yet discovered
who set off the bomb that killed Hariri. But there are a number of
remarkable elements about the Lebanese investigation.<br><br>
The first is that, a month after Hariri's murder, it has still given no
information about it. Furthermore, the bombing took place in a part of
Beirut - site of a recent Francophone conference, close to the Phoenicia
Hotel where many foreign dignitaries stay and within half a mile of
parliament - the most heavily guarded area of Lebanon.<br><br>
For the killers to have avoided the attention of the ISF, the army, the
traffic cops and a host of other security organisations as they prepared
their bomb was a truly extraordinary achievement. And for anyone to have
ordered the removal of the principle evidence from the scene of the crime
was an even more unlikely denouement.<br><br>
One of those working on the Lebanese security investigation has admitted
there have been "many mistakes made", suggesting Ali Haj's
decision to move the Hariri convoy cars came about because of his
conflicting loyalties - he had been one of Hariri's own bodyguards but
was now a senior security officer - rather than any desire to cover up
the evidence.<br><br>
He also said the police are convinced the killer was a suicide bomber,
possibly an al-Qa'ida operative who targeted Hariri because of his links
with the Saudi royal family. Hariri held Saudi citizenship. Hariri's
supporters are increasingly convinced the bomb was hidden under the
roadway, down a drain or a telephone cable duct.<br><br>
It's easy to see how each theory suits their respective creators. An
al-Qa'ida murder clears the Lebanese and Syrian security authorities of
blame.<br><br>
The bomb-under-the-road story suggests the Lebanese military security
institutions must have been breathtakingly careless in failing to notice
the planning and planting of the bomb.<br><br>
The Lebanese and the Syrians believe in the al-Qa'ida plot - even they
are blaming the Israelis as a poor second - but the political opposition
is increasingly fingering Syria for, at the least, incompetence,
carelessness, even criminal negligence.<br><br>
Hence Hariri's supporters - even many thousands of those demanding the
truth about Hariri's death - are demanding the resignation of seven
principal figures, all deeply in the pro-Syrian Lebanese justice or
intelligence services. They include General Ali Haj. The remainder are:
Adnan Adoum, the minister of justice and prosecutor general; Jamil Sayed,
the head of Lebanese General Security; Mustapha Hamdan, head of the
Lebanese Republican Guard; Raymond Azar, the head of
the"mukhabarat" intelligence service; Edgar Mansour, the head
of "national security", and Ghassan Tfayleh, the head of the
security service's "listening department", the "Amn
el-Tanassot".<br><br>
The authorities have refused to accept the list, claiming all are
honourable men performing their duties with patriotism and
devotion.<br><br>
Needless to say, there's an old Arab argument which runs in parallel with
any ordinary policeman's first question: in whose interest was it to
commit the crime? Ask the Syrians, and they say they would never commit
such an act, not least because the calumny which the accusations have
since brought upon Damascus have caused such political disadvantage to
Syria's young president, Bachar al-Assad - who has himself condemned the
killing as a "heinous crime."<br><br>
Syria's political friends in Lebanon - some of them Bachar's
acquaintances - have been pointing out, accurately, that the American
neo-conservative project for the Middle East originally drawn up by
Messers Perle, Feith, Wurmser and others, called not only for the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein but for diverting of Syria's attention
"by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilise Syrian control
of Lebanon."<br><br>
How better to destabilise Syria in Lebanon than by killing
Hariri?<br><br>
Those million Lebanese who demanded Syria's withdrawal, the resignation
of the Lebanese president and the truth about Hariri's murder on Monday
do not recognise themselves in this scenario. They also demanded to know
who killed ex-President Rene Mouawad, the Grand Mufti Khaled and the
Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt.<br><br>
It is worth pointing out that the Christians among the demonstrators did
not call for the truth about the murder of prime minister Rashid Karami
and National Liberal leader Danny Chamoun - because wartime Christian
militiamen rather than the Syrians are widely regarded as their
murderers.<br><br>
The imminent return from self-imposed French exile of the messianic
ex-General Michel Aoun - who led a hopeless "war of
independence" against the Syrians in 1989 which cost thousand of
innocent lives - is a clear sign that the opposition here could find
themselves gravely embarrassed.<br><br>
Most, in fairness, do not personally blame President Bachar al-Assad of
Syria for Hariri's murder. They were insulted by his speech in the Syrian
parliament last Saturday but are well aware that far more ruthless men
exist in Syria - and outside Syria's borders - to whom Hariri's fate
could be assigned, or even self-assigned.<br><br>
Many opposition leaders, including Walid Jumblatt - it was his father
Kamal who was murdered - hope desperately Bachar was not involved. But it
remains the case the Lebanese security officers who were appointed to
guard Lebanon on Syria's behalf have established a wretched
reputation.<br><br>
Why, for example, were three more bodies discovered at the site of the
Hariri mass murder in the two weeks that followed the bombing?<br><br>
Ali Haj could immediately take the vital evidence from the scene of the
crime - something which no police force in the world would do - on the
grounds that he needed to "protect" it. But how come his
investigation failed to spot three corpses at the scene?<br><br>
When the Zahle MP and former Syrian ally, Mohsen Dalloul, announced this
week that the Lebanese authorities "knew" who had assassinated
Hariri - who was the unofficial leader of the Lebanese opposition to
Syria until his death - those same authorities were as silent as the
proverbial grave.<br><br>
Maybe they are listening to the million Lebanese who demanded the truth.
Or maybe they are just following the usual trade of all security
services, silently listening to their telephone lines. I say this because
just three days ago, Ghassan Tfayleh, the head of the Lebanese
eavesdropping department, put a tap on my home telephone in Beirut. Well,
there's only one response to that: call any time. <br>
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