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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| UN tribunal to announce "chief suspect" is Mughniyeh's cousin |
| 2010-07-31 |
| The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon is reportedly set to announce that Mustafa Badr al-Din, a senior Hizbullah operative and close relative of the former Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, is the main suspect in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. According to an Israel TV report on Thursday night, Hariri's son, the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, asked the tribunal to postpone releasing Din's name, because of the potentially incendiary implications for Lebanon of such an announcement. And we wanna give him a chance to catch his flight to Tehran... Din, the cousin and brother- in-law of Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus in February 2008, was also reportedly responsible for planning the attempted assassination of the ruler of Kuwait in 1985, among other operations. Well...everyone should have a hobby. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, said last week that members of his group would be among those indicted by the tribunal, which he dismissed as an "Israeli plot." Many in Lebanon have worried that if the tribunal implicates Hizbullah, it could lead to another round of clashes between Lebanon's Shi'ite and Sunni communities, like the bloody conflict that convulsed Beirut in 2008. Who's making the popcorn? Tensions in Lebanon have generated so much concern that Syria's President Bashar Assad was expected to travel to Beirut on Friday, his first trip there since his troops were forced out. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah made a rare journey to Damascus on Thursday, in a visit apparently intended to indicate a united front as regional tensions mount over the pending indictments in the Hariri assassination. Syria and Saudi Arabia have long been on opposite sides of a deep rift in the Arab world, with Syria backing groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas. The Saudi kingdom is a US ally, along with Jordan and Egypt. Assad and Abdullah agreed that the "challenges facing Arabs, mainly in occupied Palestine, necessitate that all [Arabs] double their efforts to upgrade inter-Arab relations," Syria's official news agency reported after the end of a meeting between the two leaders. They also stressed the need to support all means to boost stability and unity in Lebanon. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 "Din, the cousin and brother-in-law of Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus in February 2008..." Ahem. |
| Posted by: mojo 2010-07-31 02:58 |