Media Dismiss Hezbollah Link to Hariri Killing

Syrian media have denounced a report which said that Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanon’s former premier Rafik Hariri in 2005.



In a May 27 editorial, the official newspaper Al-Thawra condemned the piece published recently in German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which said that there was information to suggest that those investigating Hariri’s murder now believe Hezbollah was responsible.



Al-Thawra’s editor-in-chief Assad Aboud said that the intentions behind the report were “devilish and criminal”.



Aboud wrote that the article was politicised and aimed at misleading investigations into the assassination of Hariri, as well as creating strife among the people of the region.



The Special Tribunal for Lebanon – an international criminal court for the prosecution of criminal acts relating to Hariri’s assassination – opened in March this year.



Aboud concluded that the article was evidence of “the fall of western media”, which he blames for distorting the truth and hiding facts, especially in relation to events in Iraq and Gaza.



“Sometimes, [western media] insult [the] sacrosanct beliefs [of people in the region]. At other times, they mock our people and now they are trying to instigate conflict among us,” he wrote.



Another opinion piece, which was published in pro-government newspaper Al-Watan on the same day, said the magazine report was part of an Israeli plan to eliminate Hezbollah, which the country’s military failed to defeat in its 2006 conflict with Lebanon.



The author of this comment piece Ibrahim Daraji said the report was published shortly before the Lebanese elections – set to take place on June 7 – in order to “widen the divisions and sectarian discord among the Lebanese”.



He suggested that the article was aimed at harming Hezbollah’s popularity in order to make it easier for Israel to eliminate the group, which, he said, it was preparing to do.