TIMMERMAN: Fear grips democracy in Lebanon

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Kenneth Timmerman

OP-ED:

BEIRUT, Lebanon.

As the Special Tribunal for Lebanon begins hearings in The Hague in the politically charged investigation into the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri four years ago, a climate of fear has gripped Lebanon.

You know the mood is tense in Beirut when the person picking you up at the airport offers to get you a gun. “For your own security, sir,” he says.

The day I arrived in the Lebanese capital, a pilot for Middle East Airlines was murdered on the airport road on his way to work. Just one week earlier, the information technology manager for that airline, the national carrier, was abducted at the airport itself. “A professional job, that left no traces,” a former Lebanese intelligence officer told me.

Dark rumors circulate about these events. Sources close to Hezbollah made it known they suspected one of the men of being an Israeli spy. As if to substantiate these claims, Hezbollah handed over a car dealer to the security forces the day after the IT manager disappeared, claiming he had installed satellite tracking devices in cars sold to Hezbollah in south Lebanon over several years.

Others believe the men were killed because they had important information about the Hariri assassination that neither the Syrians nor Hezbollah wanted exposed.

Four Lebanese generals have been arrested as suspects in the Hariri murder case. Special prosecutor Daniel Bellemarre left Beirut last Wednesday after receiving assurances from the Lebanese government it would transfer the suspects to The Hague for trial, where they were be interrogated by a panel of international jurists and four Lebanese judges.

The Lebanese judges are so fearful for their lives that even their names were kept secret until after they had left the country. An attempt by this reporter to meet one through a trusted contact failed, because the judge feared for his life.

In a report to the United Nations secretary general in October 2005, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis accused Syria and Lebanese intelligence officers of plotting the assassination. Mr. Mehlis soon resigned, apparently after receiving death threats. But his initial work led to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1757, adopted on May 30, 2007, that established the international tribunal, and the arrest by the Lebanese authorities of the four generals.