Qifa Nabki
CBC
The Hezbollah Misconnection
A couple weekends ago, The New York Times Magazine ran a story (“The Hezbollah Connection“) about the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the decade-long investigation into the killing of Rafik Hariri. Written by Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist and military analyst, it rehearses a narrative that has become familiar to Tribunal watchers and has appeared in various … Continue reading
Co-Locating with PMPs: An Assessment of the STL Indictment
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has unsealed its indictment of Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi, and Assad Sabra for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. You can download a copy of the indictment here (PDF, 12.9 megabytes). I’ve read the document once through and there’s a great deal to mull … Continue reading
Return of the Militias?
The latest Wikileaks dump by the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar extends the series of intriguing and record-changing insights into the tumultuous 2006-08 period, which witnessed the July War between Hizbullah and Israel, an 18 month-long downtown sit-in, and a takeover of Beirut by Hizbullah forces on May 7, 2008. Two cables are especially worth reading in … Continue reading
Hariri Tribunal Reports Tell a Different Story than CBC Account
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
Neil Macdonald Addresses Questions About CBC Hariri Exposé
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
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…