Yesterday, I pointed out the ID number discrepancies in two of the diplomatic cables published by the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which — despite not having been released yet by Wikileaks — are being claimed by al-Akhbar as authentic. I have no idea whether these cables are real or fakes. They look real and sound real, … Continue reading
If you haven’t yet seen them, be sure to check out the latest Wikileaks cables released to al-Akhbar, at least one of which is tremendously damning and could have major implications for the Lebanese political scene. (See here for the Lebanon-specific ones). In the cable mentioned, the Lebanese Minister of Defense Elias al-Murr discusses with … Continue reading
I spent an hour or so this morning going through previous reports by the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), in order to see how the historical record tallies with Neil Macdonald’s report about the Hariri investigation for CBC. As you’ll recall, Macdonald makes the following basic points in his piece: The UNIIIC did … Continue reading
I wrote to Neil Macdonald (author of the CBC report about the UN investigation into Rafiq al-Hariri’s murder) asking him if he would respond to some of the questions published on this blog earlier today about the timeline presented in his account of the investigation’s proceedings. Mr. Macdonald had argued in his piece that “Brammertz … Continue reading
The ink has hardly dried on the CBC report about the Hariri investigation, and I’ve already heard at least two substantive critiques of it, which I thought I’d share with you. The first comes from T_DESCO, a smart commenter at Joshua Landis’s Syria Comment blog, who has been following the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) … Continue reading
And the people say…