'Hezbollah innocent in Hariri murder'

Mon Sep 12, 2011

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Miqati has rejected allegations that Hezbollah was involved in the assassination of the country's former premier Rafiq Hariri.

Urging the Lebanese resistance movement to appoint lawyers to defend four of its members accused of involvement in the 2005 case, Miqati said that he was convinced of Hezbollah's innocence.

“What pushes me to call on Hezbollah to follow this course of action is (my) conviction that Hezbollah is innocent in the (2005) assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri,” Miqati told al-Jadeed television on Sunday night.

He also said that the issue of false witnesses in the Hariri case must be followed up and that Lebanon's attorney general has been tasked with the responsibility.

Rafiq Hariri and 22 others were killed in February 2005 in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, when a huge bomb went off near his motorcade.

In July, the US-backed tribunal investigating Hariri's murder issued its indictment and accused four Hezbollah members of taking part in the attack. The tribunal linked the four to the killing by circumstantial evidence obtained from phone records rather than direct evidence.

Beirut has not been able to arrest the men, who will be tried in absentia.

Hezbollah has repeatedly denied any role in Hariri's assassination, saying the indictments had been politically motivated. The resistance movement has also blamed media outlets and figures linked to the March 14 Movement for spreading false statements against it.

Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly described the tribunal as being full of "financial and moral corruption," and part of an American-Israeli plot targeting the resistance.

"When you read the text released by the tribunal, you will not find any substantial evidence, not a single piece of direct evidence is included," Nasrallah said.

"The only thing the tribunal relies on in is the mobile phone records, and even that is circumstantial. It doesn't even prove that any of these alleged suspects made any of these calls or even owned these phones," he added.

Hezbollah has also accused Israel of being behind the bombing.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198723.html.