Inside the Mehlis Report: Assassination As Policy
I’ve found Michael Young’s Beirut Daily Star commentaries to be both fact-filled and courageous. This essay on the UN Mehlis report appears in the OnLine Journal. Everyone knows Assad’s Syrian regime had Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri murdered. However, in the corrupt autocracies of the Middle East either (1) no one is supposed to say (2) or if someone says it they get killed or a relative disappears.
The toppling of Saddam has begun to change this terrible, terrifying code. Syria saw Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution brewing and sought to stifle it by killing Hariri. Mehlis’ charge from the UN was to investigate. I suspect there are many UN bureaucrats embarassed by the Oil for Food scandal, and Mehlis’ work gives them a chance to act. Mehlis has written a touch, accurate, and courageous report.
Which brings us back to Young’s essay. His lede:
On Thursday Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor tasked by the U.N. to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, handed his report over to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. As Security Council members receive it, the report is already being widely distributed. In Beirut, Hariri’s followers can stop counting the days between the killing and the time when the truth emerges. In contrast, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be facing a report that initiates the countdown to his own regime’s demise.
The report cites “converging evidence” of both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in the murder, and states that Hariri’s assassination was planned months in advance. It also states that it was “carried out by a group with an extensive organization and considerable resources and capabilities.” The report finds that, “given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge.”
Both senior Syrian and Lebanese officials stand accused. For example, the report mentions that a witness implicated Mr. Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, who heads Syria’s military intelligence service. Syria’s Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa was also explicitly mentioned for his attempts to mislead investigators. Another potentially devastating piece of information is that one of the suspects called Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a close Syrian ally, on his personal cell phone minutes after the blast. All this means that Mr. Assad is likely to face charges that, by action or omission, he was responsible for Hariri’s death…
Young thinks the Ghazi Kanaan “suicide” (setting up Kanaan as Assad’s fall guy) won’t fly. He also touches on thelingering “republic of fear” element vis a vis witnesses:
There had been speculation that the late interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, who the Syrian authorities said committed suicide earlier this month, would become the fall guy for the Hariri assassination. However, such a shifting of blame is no longer possible for the Syrian regime. Moreover, framing him (he was Mr. Ghazaleh’s predecessor as intelligence chief in Lebanon) always meant ignoring two things: that he largely relinquished the Lebanese file in 2002 when he returned home; and that he enjoyed a lucrative relationship with Hariri. More convincing are claims that Kanaan, who was from the ruling Alawite community and had the temperament, money and networks to be an alternative to the Assads, was regarded as a coup threat. That is why many believe he was either made to commit suicide or eliminated.
While it is clearly climactic, the Mehlis report is only the start of a long process to bring the perpetrators to justice. According to Security Council Resolution 1595, which set up the Mehlis mission, the U.N. investigation is designed to help Lebanon’s judiciary “within the framework of Lebanese sovereignty and of its legal system.” However, in summarizing the investigating team’s work last August, U.N. official Ibrahim Gambari admitted that Lebanese witnesses had “deep mistrust” of Lebanon’s security agencies and judicial process…
Read the entire document.
This is NOT the final report, Kofi Annan has given his team another month to complete work with Lebanese investigators… of course it hasn’t stopped Bush/Condi/Straw/Peres/ Uncle Tom Cobbleigh etc., to treat it as final….Hey they cannot even say what explosive was used to massacre 22 people.
Comment by Edward Teague — 10/23/2005 @ 9:06 am
Bashir Assad’s mind clearly has taken a walk off the map. This was clearly not a rational act on his part.
Comment by HaroldHutchison — 10/24/2005 @ 10:16 am
The more Mehlis digs the more he’ll find, I’m seeing parallels between the thinking and actions of Syrian and former Iraqi regime, though Syrians now have the benefit of hindsight. Ghazi Kanaan was not mentioned at all in the Mehlis report and he might been “suicided” by Maher Alassad, the brother of president Bashar after Maher’s name appeared in the report,Ghazi may had information proving the involvement of Maher or as mentioned he may seem as a candidate to replace the Assads, the only way to know the real truth is more openness on the Syrian side and so far this had not happened .
Comment by The Iraqi — 10/24/2005 @ 10:23 am
Kofi Annan is trying to make sure the report is modified in severity, lest it reveal too much of the truth for his taste and that of the tyrants he coddles. Bring this mob concession down now. Overthrow this stinking tyranny. Strike while the iron is hpt and institute a blockade of Syria. No ships move in or out, any airplanes that fly out are seized at their destinations, no aircraft are allowed to fly in, all land borders are shut tight. Short of an invAsion, this seems to me the most promising path to an overthrow. For those who take the Annan view that we should not overthrow despicable, bloody-handed tyrants, remember that the victims of the Dorktator and his consiglieri are not only Iraqis and Americans killed by terrorists in Iraq whom the Syrian government has helped to travel there, or Israelis killed by Syria’s complicity in terrorism against them, or Lebanese killed and oppressed by Syria’s puppets in that country, but also the Syrians themselves. Let us finally make an end to this vicious tyranny.
Comment by Michael Lonie — 10/24/2005 @ 2:24 pm