UN resolution 1686 on Lebanon probes deemed “insufficient”

A UN security council resolution on 15 June that prolongs the term of the commission investigating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri's murder by another year and “authorizes” the commission to “extend its technical assistance to the Lebanese authorities with regard to their investigations into the other terrorist attacks perpetrated in Lebanon since October 2004” was deemed “insufficient” today by Reporters Without Borders. “We appealed last December for the commission's mandate to be broadened, so that it could itself carry out investigations into the 14 attacks that have taken place in Lebanon in the past two years, but our appeal was clearly not heeded.” the press freedom organisation said. “This new resolution does, it is true, ask the UN secretary-general to provide the commission with the necessary support and resources so that it can help the Lebanese authorities in their investigation into the 14 attacks that have taken place, but this is not enough as the local judges handling these investigations are liable to be subjected to pressure,” Reporters Without Borders added. In his latest report, released on 10 June, the head of the commission of enquiry, Serge Brammertz, requested an extension of its mandate so that it could finish it work. The report said “considerable progress” had been made in the investigation into the Hariri assassination and there had been more cooperation from Damascus. In a statement to the security council on 14 June, Brammertz said there could be links between Hariri assassination and the 14 other attacks since October 2004. But the Lebanese investigations into these attacks lacked momentum because the authorities did not have the “forensic capacity to collect and analyse evidence effectively,” he said. A Lebanese judge was meanwhile finally appointed on 17 June to handle the investigation into the murder of Gebran Tuéni, the general manager of the An-Nahar daily newspaper, six months after he was killed by car-bomb. Tuéni was one of three Lebanese journalists who were the victims of attacks last year that are still unsolved. An-Nahar columnist Samir Kassir was blown up by a car-bomb on 2 June 2005. Well-known, respected journalists, both Tuéni and Kassir knew they could be targets after Hariri's assassination on 14 February 2005. Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation star presenter May Chidiac was badly maimed by a bombing on 25 September 2005.