page_title: Assassination of Rafic Hariri
section_title: Investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Assassination of Rafic Hariri / Investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: Beirut, Lebanon: part of Rue Minet al Hosn, where Rafik Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005. The photo was taken on July 22, 2005 when investigation still wasn't completed and the street was "conserved" and closed. Slovenščina: Bejrut, Libanon: del ulice Rue Minet al Hosn, kjer je bil 14.2.2005 izveden atentat na Rafika Haririja. Fotografija je bila posneta 22.7.2005, ko preiskava atentata še ni bila končana in je zato ulica bila zaprta in "konzervirana".
context_page_description: On 14 February 2005, former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri was killed along with 21 others at an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Explosives equivalent to around 1,000 kilograms of TNT were detonated as his motorcade drove near the St. George Hotel. Among the dead were several of Hariri's bodyguards and former Minister of the Economy, Bassel Fleihan.
  Hariri had been part of the anti-Syrian opposition in Lebanon. His assassination triggered the Cedar Revolution, a popular movement which forced Syria to withdraw all its troops in Lebanon by April 2005. The killing also led the United Nations to set up the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate the killing. The Special Tribunal, along with an independent investigation carried out by Lebanese brigadier general Wissam Al-Hassan, found compelling evidence for the responsibility of Lebanese group Hezbollah in the assassination. One of the investigators, Wissam Eid, was assassinated in 2008.
  In August 2020, judges at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon found Salim Ayyash, a mid-level operative in Hezbollah, guilty in absentia of five charges including the intentional murder of Hariri with premeditation by using explosive materials.
context_section_description: On 7 April 2005 the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1595 to send an investigative team to look into Hariri's assassination. The team, led by German judge Detlev Mehlis, presented its initial findings in the so-called Mehlis report to the Security Council on 20 October 2005. 
  The report implicated Syrian and Lebanese officials, with special focus on Syria's military intelligence chief and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat. 
  In the wake of the report, United States President George W. Bush called for a special meeting of the UN to be convened to discuss international response "as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter." Meanwhile, Detlev Mehlis asked for more time to investigate all the leads. 
  Lebanese politicians asked to extend the investigative team's duration and charter, to include assassinations of other prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese figures around that time, such as the journalist Samir Kassir (killed by a car bomb in June 2005) and Gebran Tueni (also killed by a car bomb, in December 2005). 
  A second report, submitted on 10 December 2005, upheld the conclusions from the first report. On 11 January 2006, Mehlis was replaced by the Belgian jurist Serge Brammertz.
  The Lebanese government agreed to this inquiry, though calling for the full participation, not supremacy, of its own agencies and the respect of Lebanese sovereignty. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to demand full Syrian cooperation with UN investigators in the matter, and Brammertz's last two reports praised Syria's full co-operation.
  On 30 August 2005, four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals (some of whom had promoted the false Abu Addas theory) were subsequently arrested under suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. They were detained without charge by Lebanese authorities for four years and released by the STL when it took over the investigation in 2009. Mustafa Hamdan, former head of the Lebanese Presidential Guard brigade; Jamil al Sayyed, former Director-General of Security General; Ali al Hajj, director general of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces; and Raymond Azar, the former director of the Military Intelligence were released upon an order from the STL Pre-Trial Judge at the request of the Prosecutor due to lack of evidence. In making the request, the Prosecutor had considered “inconsistencies in the statements of key witnesses and of a lack of corroborative evidence to support these statements.”
  Syrian Minister of Interior Ghazi Kanaan was interviewed in September 2005 by Detlev Mehlis' team as a "witness" in the assassination. Kanaan denied any involvement in the assassination. On October 12, Kanaan was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in his Damascus office." The Syrian government said it was a suicide, though others claimed it was murder to sever the link between Hariri's death and the regime.
  On 30 December 2005, former Syrian vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam in a televised interview implicated Assad in the assassination and said that Assad personally threatened Hariri in the months before his death. This interview has caused Syrian MPs to demand treason charges against Khaddam.
  On 18 December 2006, a progress report by former head of the investigation, Serge Brammertz, indicated that DNA evidence collected from the crime scene suggests that the assassination might be the act of a young male suicide bomber.
  On 28 March 2008, the tenth report of the UN's International Independent Investigation Commission found that, "a network of individuals acted in concert to carry out the assassination of Rafiq Hariri and that this criminal network — the "Hariri Network" — or parts thereof are linked to some of the other cases within the Commission's mandate."
  The Security Council extended the mandate for the investigation, which was to end in December 2008, until 28 February 2009.
  On 7 February 2012, Hurriyet reported investigators from the United Nations interviewed Louai Sakka, interested in whether he had played a role in the assassination.
caption: Rue Minet al Hosn where Hariri was assassinated
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