[^] Hariri Killing Traced

By John Kifner
The New York Times

By the summer of 2004, Syrian officials, long accustomed to running neighboring Lebanon, were fed up with its prime minister, Rafik Hariri. So, a UN investigation has found, they decided to kill him.

In chilling detail, often reading like a paperback thriller, the UN report traces months of plotting by top Syrian intelligence officials - including President Bashar al-Assad's powerful brother-in-law - and their Lebanese proxies. The plot included constant surveillance of Hariri's movements and the forced recruitment of a fake assassin to make a "suicide tape" to hide the real hands behind the bombing that killed Hariri in February.


The report was released Thursday. The political wrangling leading up to the assassination is well known.


In 2004, Assad bluntly ordered the Lebanese to amend their Constitution to extend the expiring term of his ally, President Émile Lahoud. Hariri, an ebullient billionaire who had almost single-handedly rebuilt the city center shattered by 15 years of civil war, objected.


On Aug. 26, he was summoned to Damascus for a meeting with Assad that lasted just 15 minutes. Hariri's relatives and allies recalled that he returned shaken; the report adds that they remember him saying Assad had threatened to "break Lebanon on your head."


The report includes the transcript of a taped conversation with Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem of Syria two weeks before Hariri was killed. In it, Hariri called the meeting "the worst day of my life."


When Hariri protested against Syria's domination of Lebanon, the report said, Moallem told him that "we and the services here have put you into a corner," referring to the security services. He continued, "Please do not take things lightly."


Hariri eventually gave in; his bloc voted to change the Constitution in a hastily called session of Parliament. Freshly printed posters of Lahoud went up in the streets and preset fireworks went off as the vote was announced. In October, Hariri resigned in disgust.


As fall turned into winter, he signaled that he would join an anti-Syrian alliance building in Beirut. Around this time, according to the report, General Mustafa Hamdan, the commander of Lahoud's personal security force, said, "We are going to send him on a trip - bye-bye Hariri."


Hamdan is one of four top Lebanese generals who have been charged with the killing by the Lebanese authorities on the recommendation of the UN investigator, Detlev Mehlis. The others are Jamil al-Sayyed, former head of Lebanon's main internal security force; Ali Hajj, former chief of the Lebanese police; and Raymond Azar, former chief of military intelligence. Those three resigned shortly after the assassination.


A version of the report that was sent by e-mail to several news outlets contained, because of a computer glitch, some passages that had been removed from the official version. These named other suspects and had apparently been edited out because the suspects had not yet been charged.


They include Assad's brother, Maher, and his brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, the head of military intelligence and widely regarded as the second most powerful man in Syria.


A diplomat who is intimately familiar with the work of the UN investigators says that as they move forward they are focusing mainly on Shawkat as the prime suspect behind the assassination.


On the day of the assassination, the report said, 10 mobile phones and 8 telephone numbers were involved. A set of prepaid telephone cards purchased in Tripoli provided records of crucial telephone calls around the time of the bombing, including one to Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite news channel. At a Syrian military base, it said, the bomb was placed in a white Mitsubishi van that had been stolen in Japan.


The van was driven into Lebanon on a special military road through the Bekaa Valley by a Syrian colonel from the 10th Army Division, a witness told the investigators. On Feb. 14, minutes before the assassination, the report says, a surveillance camera on a bank near the old St. George Hotel in Beirut "clearly showed" the white van.


As the van waited, Hariri's heavily armored Mercedes and the rest of his convoy turned the corner near the hotel. The explosion went off at 12:56 p.m. It killed 20 people as well as Hariri.


The call to Al Jazeera alerted its Beirut bureau to a videotape placed in a tree downtown. The tape showed a young Lebanese man named Ahmad Abu Adass claiming responsibility for killing the "infidel" Hariri. But his family and others who knew him said immediately that he was a most unlikely assassin. According to the report, witnesses said he had been forced to make the tape at gunpoint. At one point, in the final version, the report said it had been Shawkat who forced him to make the tape.


Adass has disappeared. The UN investigators were told he had been taken to Syria, where he was either killed or held in prison to be killed later.