Videos indicate Israel played a role in killing of Hariri, Hizbullah claims

HIZBULLAH SECRETARY general Hassan Nasrallah has accused Israel of being behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri and has backed up his charges with circumstantial evidence.

In a three-hour televised press conference on Monday night, Sayyed Nasrallah presented a video clip of an alleged Israeli collaborator who said he had told Mr Hariri’s security detail that Hizbullah planned to kill him. The man, who reportedly admitted to trying to blackmail Mr Hariri, is alleged to have fled to Israel.

Sayyed Nasrallah said Israel aimed to “get Syria out of Lebanon” by killing Mr Hariri and implicating Damascus. Six weeks after Mr Hariri was murdered, Syria, which denied involvement, pulled its troops out of Lebanon.

Damascus was initially held responsible by the UN commission investigating the killing, but four senior pro-Syrian Lebanese security officers were released for lack of evidence after spending two years in prison.

Sayyed Nasrallah argued that the UN-sponsored investigation “was used to force Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and is now being used to besiege Hizbullah”. He showed film clips he claimed had been intercepted from Israeli surveillance drones which had traced routes taken by Mr Hariri’s convoy moving around Beirut, or from there to his home base in the southern city of Sidon. “Hours before [Mr Hariri] was murdered, an Israeli drone was surveying the . . . coastline as [Israeli] warplanes were flying over the coast off Beirut,” he added.

Asked why he waited five years to provide this material, he said recent arrests and the interrogation of scores of Lebanese allegedly employed by Israel had provided new information about Israel’s involvement in the killing of Lebanese figures.

Yesterday, Fayez Karam, a former Lebanese army general and senior member of a Christian party allied to Hizbullah, was charged with spying for Israel.

Sayyed Nasrallah did not claim the material he provided was “conclusive proof”, but said it was “indicative” of Israeli involvement. He challenged the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate his charge to prove that it was not “politicised”.

A senior Israeli official dismissed the allegations as ridiculous, and said they “stem from Nasrallah’s own fears that the investigation will point to his own organisation”. Last month, Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, son of the slain politician, warned Hizbullah that some of its members could be indicted by the tribunal.