This being the official line of the Medes and the Persians...[Iran Press TV] The tribunal probing into the liquidation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is engineered by world powers to harm the resistance front in Leb, an analyst says.
And what analyst might that be, you might ask...
"There are foreign powers, who have invested a lot of time and a lot of efforts in this tribunal, thinking that this is an instrument to get to the major worry of Israel in the area, that is the resistance," said Daoud Khairallah, a Georgetown University law professor, in an interview with Press TV. "The entire idea of the tribunal is an instrument of political pressure to reach political objectives," he added.
Those objectives would be to find out who actually killed Hariri the Elder. There aren't any similar tribunals for the long series of other lesser (and in some cases greater) murders. One can only wonder what they would turn up.
Khairallah argued, "It has never happened in the history that major powers, US included, go to the Security Council and get resolutions about establishing a tribunal on a crime that is not known in the international law."
Here's a relatively harmless country that's been subjected to Syrian occupation -- Syria actually refused to recognize Leb independence until a couple years ago -- plus a seemingly interminable civil war, Paleostinian occupation, and the assassination of scores of its political oligarchy. Hariri's assassination wasn't a purely internal affair.
"Justice is the first victim and justice, that is supposed to bring together a country, has turned through the tribunal into a reason for dividing the country and keeping it divided and keeping a certain chaos inside the country and that is what we are witnessing."
... rather than just sweeping the murder under the rug with all the others and pretending it never happened.
"This is not a totally independent tribunal and that is why there is disturbance and anger on one side and that is why there is lack of confidence in the legal process," he further emphasized.
Problem is, it's much more independent that it would be if it were a purely Leb court. That's the problem for Hezbollah. They can bully most of Leb, but they can't bully the entire world.
Former premier Hariri and 20 other people were assassinated on February 14, 2005, when explosives equal to around 1,000 kilogram of TNT were blown up in downtown Beirut.
They used a ton of dynamite on the poor man. But we were all so much younger then. Best to put it all behind us...
The Washington-sponsored Special Tribunal for Leb (STL) was set up some two years later to look into the deadly incident.
Actually it's a UN tribunal. But it flies better with the reflexively anti-American crowd to hang it on Washington.
Reports say that the court would likely issue an indictment against some Hezbullies members.
My guess is that they're pretty big turban Hezbullies.
Hezbullies Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has vehemently rebuffed the allegations. He has described the tribunal as part of dangerous projects that are targeting the resistance movement.