The outgoing chief of the United Nations probe into the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri said in an interview published on Saturday he was convinced Syria was responsible for the murder.
Asked by the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat if he was ”perfectly convinced of Syria’s responsibility in the murder of Hariri,” German magistrate Detlev Mehlis said ”yes”.
”The Syrian authorities are responsible,” said Mehlis, who refused to go into details.
On Thursday Mehlis told CNN there was an obvious link between the spate of assassinations to have hit critics of Damascus since Hariri’s killing in February.
”We will have to look and we are looking for links between the assassinations as, pretty obviously, there are links between all these assassinations that happened after the death of Hariri,” he said.
The UN investigator released two reports into the assassination in October and this week which both cited evidence suggesting that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers were involved in Hariri’s murder.
The second report coincided with the murder in a devastating car bomb attack of anti-Syrian MP and press magnate Gibran Tueni.
Mehlis’ mandate for the Hariri probe ended on Thursday but he will stay on the job until his replacement is found. – AFP
