In his latest report on the U.N. investigative commission, Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz said he had made progress on the Hariri investigation in recent months and was able to draw preliminary conclusions about important aspects and to identify more people involved.Since his last report in July, Brammertz said tension had been high in Lebanon, which is going through a protracted crisis over the election of a president to succeed pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud, whose term expired last week. "The commission notes that evidence uncovered in the Hariri and some of the other attacks, including the recent assassination of Antoine Ghanem, confirms the fact that the perpetrators had and still have advanced and extensive operational capacities available in Beirut," Brammertz said. Ghanem, an anti-Syrian Christian member of parliament, was among seven people killed by a car bomb in September.
Brammertz said the tense security environment was affecting the commission's work and warned that after the failure to elect a president last week, "the prospect of a rapid deterioration cannot be excluded."
WITNESS PROTECTION
Brammertz said the investigative commission needed to restrict the information it made public to avoid jeopardizing the probe and endangering individuals, and he recommended setting up a witness protection program. He said recent developments had led to the identification of "additional persons of interest" but he gave no names.
Brammertz has said in the past that a likely motive for the attack was the role of Hariri, who became a prominent critic of Syria, in support of a 2004 U.N. resolution demanding that Syrian and other foreign troops withdraw from Lebanon. In the latest report, he said Syria had been generally cooperative with the investigation.
Brammertz also is investigating 18 other political murders or attempted murders in Lebanon and he said the commission would focus on establishing links to the Hariri case.
It was Brammertz's last report to the Security Council before his mandate expires at the end of this year, when he will be replaced by Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare.
The commission is due to hand over its findings to a special tribunal that is being established in the Netherlands. Starting Jan. 1, Brammertz will take over as prosecutor of the Hague-based international tribunal for former Yugoslavia, replacing Switzerland's Carla Del Ponte. His appointment was approved on Wednesday by the U.N. Security Council.