The UN commission probing the assassination of LebanonÂ’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri requested Thursday that its mandate be extended beyond its June expiration.Time to dump the Belgian. See if they've got another German available.
The request was made in the panel's seventh report, which also said that the commission "has made progress in collecting new evidence and in expanding the forms of evidence collected." The UN panel, headed by Belgian judge Serge Brammertz, is investigating the death of Hariri and 22 others in a massive bomb blast in February 2005 in the Beirut. Its current mandate expires in June.
The current year, by my watch, is 2007. That's two years since Hariri was killed. Maybe knock six months off before Mehlis get his authorization to start, though it wasn't that long.
"In light of the current and planned investigative activities, it is unlikely that the commission will complete its work before its current mandate expires in June 2007," the report said.
It doesn't look like the commission's gonna complete its work before all the principles and witnesses have died of old age.
| Technically, the *principles* were pepper sprayed and then bludgeoned to death by 4 p.m. on 2/14/05. The *principals* are still consuming oxygen and Mai Tais on the beach to the soothing sounds of steel drum bands. |