February 15 2005

Who Killed Al-Hariri?

Christian Henderson wrote:
Analysts were reluctant to point fingers after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in Beirut, saying there were many parties who had an interest in killing him and stirring tensions in Lebanon.
Commentators said Syria would most likely be blamed for the killing, but many of them wondered what Damascus stood to profit from having a hand in al-Hariri’s death.
“The first people who will be hurt by this is Syria. Given the chaos in Lebanon and the rising anger between the factions, analytically Syria loses a lot by this,” Rime Allaf, Middle East analyst at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, UK, told Aljazeera.net.
Although a previously unheard of outfit calling itself al-Nasir and Jihad Group in al-Sham claimed responsibility for al-Hariri’s assassination, commentators said the magnitude of the blast suggested an intelligence agency was behind the explosion rather than a small group.
Michael Young, a Lebanese political analyst and opinion editor of Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star said Damascus may be blamed for the killing and that this would have an effect on Syria’s already tense relations with the US. “The Americans will hold Syria directly responsible” he said.
Despite some suggestions that al-Hariri’s killing could mean a return to the dark days of Lebanon’s civil war that killed more than 100,000 people and raged uninterrupted between 1975 and 1990, Young was keen to make the point that he did not think there would be a resurgence in inter-communal violence. This is a political assassination. This is not the beginning of the civil war. We are not seeing Lebanese fighting each other,” he said.
Via: Je Blog

So now –although it’s considered too early to accuse anyone- most of the fingers are pointing to the Syrians!
Who really killed him? Nobody knows, for the time being that is. But as mentioned above, a U.S. accusation of Syria is very probable, and therefore, we should expect some sort of “punishment” very soon.
It’s really hard to determine who did this, but we’ll know who’s responsible sooner or later. I just hope that the ones responsible -and not some innocent people- will get their punishment…



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Posted February 15, 2005 by Eman Abukhadra in category "Arab Societies", "Media, International