The U.N. investigation into the assassination of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian former prime minister Rafik Hariri will continue under new leadership.
The United Nations has asked a Belgian prosecutor to take over its investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor and senior U.N. officials.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wants Serge Brammertz, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to succeed German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who will step down next month. Mehlis has led a six-month U.N. inquiry that has implicated members of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s inner circle in the Feb. 14 killing of Hariri.
A U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said that an announcement of the appointment will not be made until Jan. 11 but “we can confirm the secretary general has completed the selection process.” She said Annan “is satisfied there will be continuity in the leadership of the inquiry.”
Senior U.N. officials said that Annan is delaying a public announcement because Brammertz wants more time to assure governments that support the criminal court that his departure will not disrupt its war crimes investigations in Sudan, Congo and Uganda. They also expressed concern about Brammertz’s safety.
And what a rewarding position it is, replete with radicals wanting blood.
Mehlis has received frequent death threats since taking control of the U.N. probe in May. A Lebanese newspaper, An-Nahar, reported Wednesday that a pro-Syrian organization that claimed responsibility for killing the paper’s editor, Gibran Tueni, issued a new threat against Mehlis’s successor. The group said Mehlis is lucky it has not killed him.
There is more on the death threat here, including this juicy little bit of Arab rationalization of violence.
The statement described Mehlis, a German prosecutor, as a “filthy infidel” who had politicized the investigation to implicate Syria. It warned Mehlis’s successor, who has not been appointed, not to come to the same conclusions.
The statement ended with an ominous Arabic saying: “He who has given advance warning is excused.”
Good luck, Mr. Brammertz, as you try to both keep your head and nab the guilty.