The judges believed that "Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate" Mr Hariri, because Lebanon at the time was effectively controlled by Syria and Mr Hariri had publicly aligned himself against the country.
My opinion has always been that Syria had next to no motivation to eliminate Hariri.
However, the court did not find sufficient evidence to link either Hezbollah or the Syrian leadership to the assassination.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which has been in session for more than 10 years in The Hague, heard evidence from 297 witnesses, many of whom had their identity protected.
There were more than 3,000 exhibits of evidence and the final judgement amounted to 2,600 pages with 13,000 footnotes.
And in all that they couldn't find evidence to connect either Hezbollah or Syrian leadership to the assassination? Did they look at Israel's possible participation in this killing?
In the end, the three men were acquitted because their involvement in the assassination could not be proven "beyond reasonable doubt"Because the court was not convinced of their role in the killing, the case against the third defendant, Mr Merhi was not convincing beyond reasonable doubt either
Let's talk about those parallel phone patterns..
Crucially for the prosecution's case, a parallel pattern emerged showing that the anonymous phones were also geographically close to other mobile phones owned and used by the defendants.
Meaning one would have to seriously consider that the men were being set up. Framed.
UN-backed tribunal acquits 3 Hezbollah members of involvement in assassination of former Lebanon premier Rafik Hariri.
UN-backed tribunal acquits 3 Hezbollah members of involvement in assassination of former Lebanon premier Rafik Hariri.
The Hariri tribunal was mentioned most recently in the report dated August 5/20:
Blast in Beirut- Birth Pangs
I was always of the mind that Israel was behind the massive explosion that took out Rafic Hariri
Massive Explosion Killed Hariri 05
“Israel has the capability to carry out this type of operation, such as Hariri’s assassination and the other assassinations that targeted Lebanon during the past few years,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, adding that Israel’s motive was to cast the blame on its enemies, Syria and Hezbollah.
“Israel wouldn’t miss a chance to create uproar and use Hariri’s blood to drive Syria out of Lebanon and besiege the resistance,” he said referring to Hezbollah.The most sensational revelation, however, was Nasrallah’s claim that Hizbullah had discovered how to intercept television footage from Israeli reconnaissance drones flying over southern Lebanon in the mid 1990s. He said that drone images intercepted by Hezbollah led the group to stage an ambush in September 1997 in which 11 members of a 16-strong elite Israeli naval commando unit were killed.
"More footage from Israeli drones showed routes taken by Rafik Hariri’s motorcade in Beirut, including the scene of his subsequent assassination.“Was that a coincidence?” Nasrallah asked. “Such footage generally comes as the first leg of the execution of an operation.”"
Israel had the means, the motivation and the most to gain from the Hariri assassination then and the destabilizing affects of the pre determined verdict, now. The clearing of Hezbollah and Syria still leaves Israel as the most likely suspectFrom earlier today: