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.
Zvi comments:
This man was no "undisciplined element. [as Hezbollah leader Nasrallah hinted in a recent speech about possible Hezbollah involvement in the assassination.] " He was very, very well connected within Hezbollah.
Mughniyeh himself was arguably Hezbollah's most important military/terrorist figure, and was THE liaison between Hezbollah and Iran. It is inconceivable that in the strictly controlled Hezbollah organization, the assassination of an enemy would occur without the active participation of either the "head of the security section" (Imad Mughniyeh) or the organization's top leadership (Nasrallah and his cronies).
Is Hezbollah really tightly controlled? Of course it is. Hezbollah members don't even fire off the odd random rocket into Israel. They don't engage in random gun-battles in which they kill each other. When the Hezbollah leaders say "attack," they attack suddenly, showing a great deal of preparation. When the Hezbollah leaders say "vanish," they vanish. Contrast the tight control under which Hezbollah members operate with the chaotic laxity of Fatah or the "zeal" and lack of control displayed by Hamas. Nobody in HA assassinates the prime minister without instructions from above, and ultimately without obtaining either instructions or permission from Tehran.
The Saudi king and Bashar al-Assad visit Lebanon and encourage the Lebanese to appease Hezbollah and unite, in the traditional pan-Arabist fashion, around hatred of Israel. The UN coordinator thinks that this idea is just peachy:
The joint communique by Assad and King Abdullah urged Lebanese parties to "pursue the path of appeasement and dialogue and to boost national unity in the face of outside threats," referring to Israel.
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"The visits of these Arab heads of state will be enormously important and beneficial for Lebanon's stability and future," Michael Williams, the UN's special coordinator to the country, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah's political allies are aligning behind that group to pre-emptively slander the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, calling it the worst insult they can: Zionist.
House Speaker Nabih Berri who has been very quiet over the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) joined Hezbollah in denouncing the court on Saturday and stressed that Israel is aiming to exploit STL in order to create internal strife in Lebanon.
During the reopening of the Bint Jbeil hospital in southern Lebanon, Berri said: “Israel has nothing better to do than create division between the Lebanese.”