Addoum: Nothing certain in blast until final report
Daily Star - Lebanon, Lebanon - Mar 4, 2005
BEIRUT: Despite reports pointing to a suicide bomber as the cause of the blast which killed former Premier Rafik Hariri, officials stressed Friday that nothing is certain until the investigation’s final report.
Outgoing Justice Minister, Adnan Addoum said: “Any news piece released without reference to an actual named judiciary report can’t be relied on and doesn’t necessarily reveal the content of the investigation file. You have to wait for the final report from Fitzgerald.”
Addoum’s statement came as a response to the latest headlines that read “a suicide bomb probably killed Hariri,” citing unnamed judicial sources close to the probe.
The source said the “attack happened when a car slowed down to allow Hariri’s motorcade to pass it and as the motorcade passed it, the car blew up.”
The same source said that the evidence came from a security camera from the HSBC bank which caught parts of the incident.
However, judiciary reports given to The Daily Star stated that four of the surviving escorts that were with Hariri the day of the blast were interviewed by the Magistrate Michel Abu Arraj, head of the local investigation, where they confirmed “that no car overtook the motorcade and there was no suspicious car present at the site.”
Furthermore, the report added that footage from the HSBC camera which is being cited as showing a suspicious car passing Hariri’s convoy, was “inaccurate” as the camera was situated at an angle that “didn’t show enough detail and didn’t capture the actual explosion.” Arraj and his team are working on identifying the “brand of the car used” and are leaving the mission of identifying the type of explosives, weight and origin to the Swiss experts arriving over the weekend as “where explosives are made may reveal who might have planted the bomb,” read the report.
The contradictory reports are mounting perhaps with the growing pressure on finding answers, with President Emile Lahoud saying: “Finding out who killed Hariri is our priority.”
Arraj also released the full report obtained from coroner Hussain Shahrour regarding the cause and time of death of Abdel-Hamid Ghalayini, who was missing for 17 days before being found at the bomb site by family members Wednesday.
The report said: “The level of decomposition, especially of the stomach which remained intact, reveals that Abdel-Hamid Ghalayini’s time of death goes back more than two weeks and less than three weeks.”
The detailed report comes in response to Ghalayini’s family’s demands for information as to when and how he died.
The coroner stressed his findings, repeating that the “death was immediate due to serious damage to the skull from solid objects.”
If the suicide bomber hypothesis holds, then authorities will most likely turn to their first suspect, Ahmed Tayseer Abu Adas, who has been linked to an aired video showing a Muslim militant claiming responsibility for the attack.
Local authorities confirmed that DNA tests had been conducted on the remains of a body found at the site, proving it to be that of Abu Adas.
**However, Abu Adas’ father has never veered from his repeated statements that his son did not know how to drive.
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