The Guardian Weekly - January 24 - 30th 2014.pdf
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A week in the life of the world |
24-30 January 2014
Vol 190 No 7
£2.40 €4.60*
Exclusions apply
Incorporating material from the Observer,
Le Monde and the Washington Post
Tragedy
in Uganda
Kony survivors
speak out
In the eye
of the storm
Wild weather
enthusiasts
Hope and
fading glory
Britain before
the Great War
vors
ar
NSA ‘reform’: more of the same
Bulk surveillance set
to remain in place
Oversight committees
too soft to eff ect change
Analysis
Glenn Greenwald
In response to political scandal and
public outrage, o cial Washington
repeatedly uses the same well-worn
tactic. It has been hauled out over
decades in response to many of
America’s most signifi cant politi-
cal scandals. Predictably, it shaped
President Obama’s much-heralded
speech last Friday to announce pro-
posals for “reforming” the National
Security Agency in the wake of seven
months of worldwide controversy.
The crux of this tactic is that US
political leaders pretend to validate
and even channel public anger by
acknowledging there are “serious
questions that have been raised”.
They vow changes to ensure these
problems never happen again. And
they then set out to do the opposite:
to make the system more politically
palatable with empty, cosmetic “re-
forms” so as to placate public anger
while leaving the system fundamen-
tally unchanged.
This scam has been so frequently
used that it is now easily recog-
nisable. In the 1970s, the Senate
uncovered surveillance abuses
that had been ongoing for decades,
generating widespread public fury.
In response, Congress enacted a new
law (Fisa) that featured two primary
“safeguards”: a requirement of
Silent witness … a statue of George Washington in the Capitol building
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
judicial review for any domestic sur-
veillance, and newly created com-
mittees to ensure legal compliance
by the intelligence community.
But the new court was designed to
ensure that all of the government’s
requests were approved: it met in se-
cret, only the government’s lawyers
could attend, it was staff ed with the
most pro-government judges, and
it was even housed in the executive
branch. As planned, the court virtu-
ally never said no to the government.
The most devoted and slavish
loyalists of the National Security
State were installed as the commit-
tee’s heads. As the New Yorker’s
Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013
article, the committees “more often
treat … senior intelligence o cials
like matinee idols”. As a result, the
committees, ostensibly intended
to serve an overseer function, have
far more often acted as the NSA’s
in-house PR fi rm.
The same thing happened after
the New York Times, in 2005, re-
vealed that the NSA under Bush had
been eavesdropping on Americans
for years without the warrants
required by criminal law. The US po-
litical class loudly claimed that they
would resolve the problems that led
to that scandal. Instead, they did
the opposite: in 2008, a bipartisan
Congress, with the support of then-
Senator Barack Obama, enacted a
new Fisa law that legalised the bulk
of the once-illegal Bush programme,
including allowing warrantless
eavesdropping on hundreds of mil-
lions of foreign nationals and large
numbers of Americans as well.
Last week we had the spectacle of
Obama reciting
Continued on page 4≥
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2
The Guardian Weekly 24.01.14
World roundup
Mexico’s sugar tax could set precedent
US Congress fi nally passes a budget
Catalans vote for autonomy referendum
1
4
6
A groundbreaking
tax on sugar-sweet-
ened beverages in
Mexico could provide
the evidence needed to
justify similar laws else-
where, health experts
believe.
They are watching to
see what impact the tax
has on consumption in
Mexico, where 32.8% of
the population is obese.
The impact on health has
been serious – 14% of the
population has diabetes.
T here is no
conclusive evidence
that raising the price of
such drinks will aff ect
obesity levels, but the
Mexican experiment is
on an unprecedented
scale. The tax was set
at 10% per litre. Every
year Mexico’s 118 mil-
lion people drink 163
litres of soda each, or
nearly half a litre a day.
The National Institute of
Public Health says the
tax should cut that to
141 litres, preventing
up to 630,000 cases of
diabetes by 2030.
≥
The US Congress
agreed how to
apportion more
than $1 trillion worth
of annual government
spending, passing an
appropriations bill by a
comfortable majority.
Despite fraught nego-
tiations that included a
government shutdown
in October, the culmi-
nation of the budget
process came faster than
expected once a detailed
text of the bipartisan
spending compromise
was published . Last
Thursday’s 72-26 vote
in the Senate was pre-
ceded by an equally
large vote in favour by
the House of Represent-
atives, and means the
“omnibus” will be signed
into law by President
Obama before Friday’s
deadline.
Catalan politi-
cians have voted
in favour of asking
for the right to hold a
referendum on inde-
pendence from Spain
– a milestone in years of
mass protests by Cata-
lans, who are fi ercely
proud of their distinct
culture and language.
But the vote is also
largely symbolic: Cata-
lonia can ask Spain for
permission to hold an
independence vote,
but Madrid still has the
power to say no, and it
almost certainly will.
≥
For more news
from Europe, turn
to page 10
pp
There is no
More Latin America
news, page 9
Road rally damaging Chilean heritage
R
d
ll
d
i
6
4
1
2
The Dakar Rally
of off -road vehi-
cles may be one
of motor sport’s most
spectacular sights, but
archaeologists, environ-
mentalists and others
warn it is ruining Chile’s
heritage. Chilean gov-
ernment studies seen
by the Guardian confi rm
the damage done to
geoglyphs, protected
sites, burial grounds and
tracks on the Inca trail,
but such is the race’s
importance for tourism
that it has been given
the green light. The rally
runs from Argentina to
Chile, via the Andes and
Bolivia’s salt fl ats.
Eye on Sochi security as Olympics loom
5
The US military
said on Monday
that air and naval
assets would be made
available to help Rus-
sia combat any possible
terrorist attacks on the
Sochi Winter Olympics.
The Pentagon said US
military commanders
were “conducting pru-
dent planning and prep-
arations” should Ameri-
can support be required
during the Olympics,
which has been the tar-
get of threats by militant
Islamist s.
“The United States
has off ered its full sup-
port to the Russian gov-
ernment as it conducts
security preparations for
the Winter Olympics,”
Pentagon spokesman
Rear Admiral John Kirby
said in a statement.
“Air and naval assets,
to include two Navy
ships in the Black Sea,
will be available if
requested for all manner
of contingencies in sup-
port of – and in consulta-
tion with – the Russian
government.”
The Pentagon state-
ment came the same
day that two men, said
by Islamist militants to
have carried out suicide
attacks in south Rus-
sia, appeared in a video
donning explosive belts
and warning Russian
President Vladimir Putin
to expect a “present”
at the Sochi games. The
militant group in Rus-
sia’s North Caucasus has
claimed responsibility
for twin suicide bomb-
ings in the southern city
of Volgograd last month.
Owing to Sochi’s
location and the secu-
rity measures Russian
authorities have put in
place, most US intel-
ligence experts say
any attacks during the
Olympics are most likely
to occur at places other
than Sochi.
2
Italian conductor Claudio Abbado dies
3
Claudio Abbado,
the Italian conduc-
tor, has died aged
80. He had been in fail-
ing health for several
months, and had not
conducted in public
since last summer.
Abbado’s relatives
released a statement
saying the maestro
had died “peacefully,
surrounded by his fam-
ily”. In Italy, where
Abbado had recently
been appointed a life
senator in parliament,
tributes poured in for a
man regarded as one of
the country’s greatest
cultural fi gures. Writ-
ing on Twitter, Matteo
Renzi, leader of the
centre-left Democratic
Party, paid tribute to
Abbado’s “extraordinary
greatness”.
Abbado was widely
seen as one of the most
acclaimed conductors
of his time. Among his
posts were music direc-
tor of La Scala, Milan’s
famous opera house,
principal conductor of
the London Symphony
Orchestra, and chief con-
ductor of the Berlin Phil-
harmonic. Abbado’s fi nal
concert, of the two great
unfi nished symphonies
by Schubert and Bruck-
ner, was broadcast on
BBC radio in December.
Rwandans held over spy chief killing
7
Four Rwandans,
including a military
o
cial, are being
held in Mozam-
bique in con-
nection with
the killing
of a former
Rwandan spy
chief in Johan-
nesburg and
await extradition
to South Africa, Mozam-
bique police said.
The body of Patrick
Karegeya, the exiled
former head of Rwandan
intelligence (pictured),
was found in a
Johannesburg
hotel this
month. One of
the suspects is
Francis Gak-
werere, a sen-
ior o
cial in the
Rwandan armed
forces, police said.
≥
For more Africa
news, see page 7
The Guardian Weekly 24.01.14
3
Eyewitnessed
The week’s events in pictures
≥ Centre pages 24-25
Egyptians support new constitution
Death for 30 in Vietnam heroin trial
Last Japanese soldier to surrender dies
8
10
12
More than 98% of
participants in the
fi rst Egyptian poll
of the post-Morsi era
voted in favour of a new
constitution, the elec-
toral commission said.
The government
hailed the result as a
show of support for
the direction Egypt
has taken since the
overthrow of Mohamed
Morsi . S everal no-cam-
paigners were arrested
before the vote.
O
cials said the turn-
out was a respectable
38.6%. The new consti-
tution strengthens three
institutions – the mili-
tary, the police and the
judiciary. It also gives
more rights to women
and disabled people, and
removes certain Islam-
ist-leaning clauses.
A court in
Vietnam has
sentenced
30 people to death for
tra
cking in heroin at
the conclusion of a mass
trial.
State media reported
the 21 men and nine
women were convicted
on Monday of being part
of a ring that smuggled
nearly two tonnes of
heroin from Laos into
Vietnam and on to China.
The trial lasted 20
days and was held in the
northern province of
Quang Ninh.
Vietnam has tough
drug laws and possess-
ing or tra
cking 600g
of heroin can result in a
death sentence.
There are nearly 700
people on death row.
≥
The last Japa-
nese soldier
to come out of
hiding and surrender,
almost 30 years after the
end of the second world
war, has died.
Hiroo Onoda (pic-
tured), an army intel-
ligence o
cer, caused a
sensation when he was
persuaded to come out
of hiding in the Philip-
pine jungle in 1974.
The native of Waka-
yama prefecture in west-
ern Japan died of heart
failure at a hospital in
Tokyo last Thursday, his
family said. He was 91.
Onoda’s decades
spent in the jungle – ini-
tially with three com-
rades and fi nally alone
– came to be seen as an
For more Asia
news, see page 12
example of the extraor-
dinary lengths to which
some Japanese soldiers
would go to demonstrate
their loyalty to the then
emperor in whose name
they fought.
China tests hypersonic missile vehicle
3
5
13
13
China has
tested a hyper-
sonic missile
vehicle designed to
travel several times the
speed of sound, accord-
ing to the Pentagon.
The test makes China
the second country
after the US to conduct
experimental fl ights
with hypersonic vehi-
cles, a technology that
could allow armies to
rapidly strike distant
targets anywhere around
the world.
“We’re aware of the
test of the hypersonic
vehicle, but we are not
commenting on it,”
said Lieutenant Colonel
Jeff Pool, a spokesman
for the Pentagon. The
fl ight was conducted
on 9 January and the
Chinese vehicle, dubbed
the WU-14, is supposed
to travel at Mach 10,
according to a report
in the Washington Free
Beacon .
State-run broad-
caster China Radio
International quoted
the defence ministry as
saying: “China’s planned
domestic scientifi c
research and experi-
ments are normal and
are not aimed at any
country or target.”
12
9
8
14
10
11
7
Iran stops key uranium enrichment
9
Iran has halted
its most sensitive
uranium enrich-
ment work as part of a
landmark deal struck
with world powers, state
television said.
The broadcast said
Iran had stopped enrich-
ing uranium to 20% –
which is just steps away
from being capable of
producing fuel for an
atom bomb – by cutting
the link that feeds the
cascades enriching ura-
nium in Natanz.
State media reported
that international
inspectors were present
when Iran began imple-
menting its obligations
under the historic deal
that was reached in
Geneva on 24 November.
They left to monitor the
suspension at Fordo,
another uranium enrich-
ment site in central Iran.
The o
cial IRNA
news agency said Iran
also started to convert
part of its stockpile of
20% enriched uranium to
oxide to produce nuclear
fuel.
Under the recent
deal, Iran agreed to
halt its 20% enrichment
programme but will
continue enrichment up
to 5%.
≥
Thailand considers state of emergency
New obstacle to moving Okinawa base
14
Attempts to
relocate a
controversial
US marine base on the
southern Japanese island
of Okinawa received a
blow when voters in the
base’s proposed new
location re-elected a
mayor who has vowed to
block the move.
The victory by
Susumu Inamine, who
stood on an anti-base
platform in the city
of Nago, is a serious
setback to eff orts by
the prime minister,
Shinzo Abe, to move the
Futenma marine corps
base from a heavily pop-
ulated part of the island
to a more remote site.
The base’s uncertain
future has been a thorn
in the side of relations
between Japan and the
US, which appeared
to have made a break-
through last month
when Okinawa’s gover-
nor, Hirokazu Nakaima,
ended his opposition to
the relocation plan.
But the move is
opposed by many
Okinawans who want the
base taken off the island.
11
Thai authorities
are considering
a state of emer-
gency after violence in
Bangkok, where protest-
ers have been trying to
topple the government,
security chief Paradorn
Pattantabutr said. The
unrest is the latest epi-
sode in an eight-year
confl ict that pits the
middle class against
poorer supporters of
prime minister Yingluck
Shinawatra and her
brother, ex-premier
Thaksin Shinawatra.
More Middle East
news, page 5
4
The Guardian Weekly 24.01.14
International news
NSA surveillance
Obama tries to fi nd a balance
Reception in
Europe and
Brazil mixed
But president stops short
of ending controversial
bulk collection of data
Guardian reporters
Barack Obama’s speech on limited
reform of US espionage practices re-
ceived a muted response around the
world, with many saying the meas-
ures did not go far enough to address
concerns over America snooping on
its allies.
Viviane Reding, vice-president of
the European commission, said Oba-
ma’s speech was a step in the right di-
rection: “I am encouraged to see that
non-US citizens stand to benefi t from
spying safeguards … I agree with Pres-
ident Obama [that] more work will be
needed in future. I look forward to
seeing these commitments followed
by legislative action.”
But Jan-Phillip Albrecht, the Ger-
man MEP who is steering through
the European parliament stiff er rules
on the transfer of data to the US, dis-
missed the initiative. “It is not su -
cient at all,” he said. “The collection
of foreigners’ data will go on … There
is nothing here that leads to a change
of the situation.”
Angela Merkel’s spokesperson,
Steff en Seibert, said: “Many people
in Germany are rightfully concerned
about the safety of their private data
after reports about NSA activity … we
welcome in principle that the protec-
tion of data and personal rights also
of non-US citizens will be taken more
into consideration in the future.”
A source close to the British deputy
prime minister, Nick Clegg, said: “A lot
but not all of what President Obama
had to say has only relevance to the US
rather than direct read across. But it is
also clear that there is a more open de-
bate in the US about surveillance than
we are having in this country.”
In Brazil, where documents leaked
by Edward Snowden showed the
NSA monitored the phone calls of
President Dilma Rousseff , as well as
collecting the phone and email data
of millions of ordinary citizens, of-
fi cials said the government did not
plan to comment publicly on Obama’s
speech.
Other Brazilians had mixed views
about whether it would open up
enough diplomatic wriggle room to
smooth bilateral relations.
But Ronaldo Lemos, director of the
Institute of Technology and Society of
Rio de Janeiro, said the speech would
help to reduce public and government
anger towards the US. “I think it paves
the way for a better Brazil-US relation-
ship for sure,” he said.
Spencer Ackerman
Dan Roberts
Washington
Barack Obama last Friday outlined a
series of surveillance reforms in the
wake of six months of revelations from
whistleblower Edward Snowden, say-
ing that the government should no
longer hold databases of every call
record made in the United States.
The president stopped short of
demanding an end to the bulk col-
lection of phone data, and was vocif-
erous in his support of the National
Security Agency, but outlined a series
of changes to balance civil liberties
concerns.
“This debate will make us
stronger,” he told his audience at the
US justice department in a speech
timed to address an audience in Eu-
rope, where there has been signifi cant
concern over activities exposed by
Snowden.
The president announced:
•
The US government will no longer
store the phone call information of
millions of Americans. But Obama
did not say who should maintain the
information, instead giving the intel-
ligence agencies 60 days to come up
with options.
•
Intelligence agencies must, with
immediate eff ect, apply to the secret
Fisa court for judicial approval to
access Americans’ phone records.
•
The secret foreign intelligence
Privacy concerns … Obama outlines his NSA reforms
Charles Dharapak/AP
surveillance court should be reformed
to include a panel of independent
advocates to provide a voice in “sig-
nifi cant cases”.
•
The NSA will not spy on the heads
of state and governments of allies,
and some further protections will be
given to foreign citizens whose com-
munications become caught up in the
agency’s dragnet.
“We have to make some important
decisions about how to protect our-
selves and sustain our leadership in
the world, while upholding the civil
liberties and privacy protections that
our ideals and our constitution re-
quire,” he said.
Obama called for further reviews
of the thorny questions surrounding
the scope of the NSA’s power, saying:
“The challenge is getting the details
right, and that is not simple.” He has
directed the attorney general, Eric
Holder; the NSA director, Keith Alex-
ander; and the rest of the intelligence
community to present proposals for
which private entity should hold
Americans’ telephone metadata, cast-
ing it as an issue that requires further
deliberation before any decision that
could have major implications for
both privacy and security.
Obama made it clear that the da-
tabases would continue to exist, in
eff ect rejecting a call from civil liber-
tarians to require the NSA to collect
subscriber information from phone
companies only when it possesses
specifi c suspicion of connection to a
terrorist group or other wrongdoing.
Why NSA ‘reforms’ will mean more of the same
≤Continued from page 1
paeans
to the values of individual privacy
and the pressing need for NSA safe-
guards. “Individual freedom is the
wellspring of human progress,” he
gushed. “One thing I’m certain of,
this debate will make us stronger,”
he pronounced, while still seeking
to imprison for decades the whistle-
blower who enabled that debate.
But those pretty rhetorical fl our-
ishes were accompanied by plainly
cosmetic “reforms”. By design,
those proposals will do little more
than maintain rigidly in place the
bulk surveillance systems that have
sparked such controversy and anger.
To be sure, there were several
proposals from Obama that are
positive steps. A public advocate in
the Fisa court, a loosening of “gag
orders” for national security let-
ters, removing metadata control
from the NSA, stricter standards for
accessing metadata, and narrower
authorisations for spying on friendly
foreign leaders (but not, of course,
their populations) can all have some
marginal benefi ts. But even there,
Obama’s speech was so bereft of spe-
cifi cs that they are more like slogans
than serious proposals.
Ultimately, the radical essence of
the NSA – a system of suspicion-less
spying aimed at hundreds of millions
of people in the US and around the
world – will fully endure even if all
of Obama’s proposals are adopted.
The real purpose of this process is,
Obama and his o cials repeatedly
acknowledged, “to restore public
confi dence” in the NSA. In other
words, the goal isn’t to truly reform
the agency; it is to deceive people
into believing it has been so that
they no longer are angry about it.
As the ACLU’s executive director
Anthony Romero said: “The presi-
dent should end – not mend – the
government’s collection and reten-
tion of all law-abiding Americans’
data. When the government collects
and stores every American’s phone
call data, it is engaging in a textbook
example of an ‘unreasonable search’
that violates the constitution.”
Obama prettifi es the ugly; he
makes Americans feel better about
policies they fi nd repellent without
the need to change any of them in
meaningful ways. He’s not an agent
of change but the soothing branding
packaging for it.
The Guardian Weekly 24.01.14
5
International news
‘Systematic killing’ in Syria
Kerry gets
an apology
from Israel
Photos of detainee
corpses may lead to
war crimes charges
Harriet Sherwood
Jerusalem
Israel’s defence minister has been
forced to apologise for “off ensive and
inappropriate” remarks, in which he
described US secretary of state John
Kerry as obsessive and messianic,
after the ensuing diplomatic row
engulfed the US mission to broker a
peace deal in the Middle East.
Moshe Ya’alon, an ally of Israeli
prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu,
had dismissed Kerry’s eff orts to pur-
sue a peace deal in private conver-
sations with US and Israeli o cials,
which were reported in the Israeli
media. He did not deny the accuracy
of the comments.
“Secretary of state John Kerry –
who arrived here determined, and
who operates from an incomprehen-
sible obsession and a sense of mes-
sianism – can’t teach me anything
about the confl ict with the Palestin-
ians,” Ya’alon was quoted as saying.
He added: “The only thing that might
save us is if John Kerry wins the Nobel
prize and leaves us be.”
In a rebuke to Israel, state depart-
ment spokeswoman US Jen Psaki said:
“The remarks of the defence minister,
if accurate, are off ensive and inappro-
priate, especially given all that the US
is doing to support Israel’s security
needs.” Last Tuesday Ya’alon’s o
ce
issued a statement saying he “had no
intention to cause any off ence”.
According to some reports, Ya’alon
was refl ecting views widely held in
the Israeli cabinet.
The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth
quoted an Israeli cabinet minister,
who said privately that Kerry is
“naive, obsessive, delusional”.
Michael Cohen, page 18 ≥
Ian Black
Syrian government officials could
face war crimes charges in the light
of a huge cache of evidence smug-
gled out of the country showing the
“systematic killing” of about 11,000
detainees, according to three eminent
international lawyers.
The three, former prosecutors at
the criminal tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, exam-
ined thousands of Syrian govern-
ment photographs and fi les record-
ing deaths in the custody of regime
security forces from March 2011 to
last August.
Most of the victims were young
men and many corpses were emaci-
ated, bloodstained and bore signs
of torture. Some had no eyes; oth-
ers showed signs of strangulation or
electrocution.
The UN and independent human
rights groups have documented
abuses by both Bashar al-Assad’s gov-
ernment and rebels, but experts say
this evidence is more detailed and on a
far larger scale than anything that has
yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.
The three lawyers interviewed the
source, a military policeman who
worked secretly with a Syrian oppo-
sition group and later defected and
fled the country. In three sessions
conducted earlier this month they
found him credible and truthful and
his account “most compelling”.
They put all evidence under rigor-
ous scrutiny, says their report, which
has been obtained by the Guardian
and CNN.
The authors are Sir Desmond de
Documented abuses ... Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad
Joseph Eid/Getty
Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of
the special court for Sierra Leone; Sir
Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead
prosecutor of former Yugoslavian
president Slobodan Milosevic; and
professor David Crane, who indicted
president Charles Taylor of Liberia at
the Sierra Leone court.
The defector, who for security rea-
sons is identifi ed only as Caesar, was a
photographer with the Syrian military
police. He smuggled the images out
of the country on memory sticks to a
contact in the Syrian National Move-
ment, which is supported by the Gulf
state of Qatar.
The 31-page report, commissioned
by a leading fi rm of London solicitors
acting for Qatar, is being made avail-
able to the UN, governments and
human rights groups. Its publication
appears deliberately timed to coin-
cide with this week’s UN-organised
Geneva II peace conference, designed
to negotiate a way out of the Syrian
crisis .
Caesar told the investigators his
job was “taking pictures of killed
detainees”. He did not claim to have
witnessed executions. But he did
describe a highly bureaucratic system.
“The procedure was that when
detainees were killed at their places
of detention their bodies would be
taken to a military hospital to which
he would be sent with a doctor and
a member of the judiciary, Caesar’s
function being to photograph the
corpses … There could be as many as
50 bodies a day to photograph which
require 15 to 30 minutes of work per
corpse,” the report says.
De Silva said that the evidence
“documented industrial-scale kill-
ing”. He added: “This is a smoking
gun of a kind we didn’t have before.
It makes a very strong case indeed.”
•
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-
moon, was forced to retract an invi-
tation to Iran to attend this week’s
summit on Syria after Tehran said it
did not support the plan for a transi-
tional Syrian government that formed
the basis for the talks.
Ex-Lebanese PM Hariri was marked man, tribunal told
hearings in The Hague. The fi rst day
of evidence, in what is expected to be
at least 15 months of hearings, was as
signifi cant for what it did not say as
what prosecutors disclosed.
Over the last two years, much has
been made in Lebanon and elsewhere
in the Middle East of the four accused
being members of Hezbollah, the Shia
militia. In six hours of opening re-
marks, three prosecutors laid out the
case against the men – Mustafa Badred-
dine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi
and Assad Sabra – without making any
mention of their alleged a liation. Us-
ing call records from the six months
leading up to the killing, the prosecu-
tion alleged that the accused started
monitoring Hariri from the day he quit
as prime minister on 20 October 2004.
They alleged the group had used at
least three networks of mobile phones.
Hariri had resigned as a dispute fes-
tered over an extension of the term of
the then Lebanese president, Emile
Lahoud, who was backed by Syria.
Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president,
wanted Lahoud to stay in the post.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasral-
lah has refused to hand over the ac-
cused men, all of whom are believed
to remain under the protection of the
group in Lebanon. He has denied that
the group had any role in the attack.
Martin Chulov
The Hague
Lebanon’s former prime minister
Rafi k Hariri was a marked man from
the moment he stepped down as
leader in late 2004 – with assassins
watching almost his every move until
they killed him on 14 February 2005,
the international tribunal into his
death heard last Thursday.
Nearly nine years after Hariri’s
death in an explosion in Beirut, the
Special Tribunal for Lebanon, jointly
funded by the state and the UN, began
Rafi k Hariri was
killed in 2005 –
a tribunal heard
he was watched
by assassins
after quitting as
leader in 2004
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