Robert Parry
A new United Nations report implicates the Syrian government in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, giving a lift to George W. Bush’s demand for “regime change” in Damascus. But the investigation has many holes, including failure to follow up on a mysterious van connected to the Feb. 14 bombing.
The 54-page U.N. report concludes that the bomb that killed Hariri and 22 other people in Beirut was likely in a white Mitsubishi Canter Van that closed in on the convoy of cars carrying Hariri and his entourage before a suicide bomber detonated the powerful blast. While the identity of the bomber remains a mystery, a Japanese forensic team matched 44 of 69 pieces of the van’s wreckage to Canter parts manufactured by Mitsubishi Fuso Corp. and even identified the specific vehicle. The chain of possession for that van thus would seem to be a crucial lead in identifying the killers.
But on that central point, the U.N. investigation made little headway, devoting only a few paragraphs to how the van ended up in Beirut. On page 42, the U.N. report states that the Japanese forensic team reported that the van was traced back to Sagamihara City, Japan, where on Oct. 12, 2004, it was stolen. The U.N. report contains no details about the Japanese investigation of the theft, nor does it indicate what Japanese police may have discovered about the identity of the thieves or how they may have shipped the van from a suburb of Tokyo to the Middle East in the four months before the Hariri attack.
Redoubled Efforts
Though the investigation of a vehicle theft may have attracted little Japanese police attention a year ago, the van’s apparent role in a major act of international terrorism would seem to justify a redoubling of those efforts now. At minimum, the U.N. investigators might have insisted on including details such as the name of the original owner, the circumstances surrounding the theft, and the identities of car-theft rings in the Sagamihara area. Plus, investigators could have checked on shipments of white Mitsubishi Canter Vans out of Japan to Middle East destinations. Since the time frame between the reported theft and the bombing was less than four months, Japanese authorities could have at least narrowed down those possible shipments and Middle East customs services might have records of imported vehicles. Instead, the U.N. investigation concentrated on far flimsier and more circumstantial pieces of evidence, such as phone records showing communications between various security officials near the route of Hariri’s trip.
http://www.buzzflash.com/?track=6813
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