The STL, the CBC, and the Hariri Investigation

By now we've all been primed for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)'s expected indictment of senior Hizbullah figures in the Hariri assassination. Though that hasn't happened yet, an apparent leak of details of the investigation has now provoked a lot of debate and armchair analysis. I'm not even going to try to summarize the story here, since the report, by CBC News, is lengthy, detailed, and includes charts. (The fact that the current chief of the STL, Daniel Bellemare, is Canadian comes to mind, but the CBC report by Neil Macdonald goes out of its way to note that Bellemare refused to be interviewed by the CBC.) Read the report first, so you'll know what the various blogosphere commenters are talking about.

Qifa Nabki has, of course, been on the case. A first posting here; a longer post raising various questions here; and a post in which reporter Macdonald responds to some of the questions raised.

Qifa also quotes commenter T_DESCO, who has posted analysis quoting earlier reports from the STL to raise questions about Macdonald's report over at Josh Landis' Syria Comment blog.

Of course this kind of point by point criticism of a leaked story suggests the leak itself was planted by someone. All of which reminds us that in a region where every event produces a related conspiracy theory, this one clearly was a conspiracy that involved a lot of people, reached into the Lebanese security services, and perhaps involved some deliberate false flags.

Read both the CBC report and the commentaries. They'll likely preoccupy Lebanese coffeehouse debates until the STL really does unveil its conclusions.

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