From uruknet.info
No one knows who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. We do know, however, that the main witness cited in the UN report, Zuhir Mohamed Said Saddik, "has been convicted of embezzlement and fraud among other crimes" (Der )which casts grave doubt on the credibility of his testimony.
No problem; the Bush administration has used convicted fraudsters to make their case for war before, particularly in the case of Iraq where the specious claims of Ahmed Chalabi appeared consistently on the front page of the New York Times creating the rationale for the invasion. But, Sadik’s trustworthiness is even more uncertain than Chalabi’s. "Sources in the UN say that Sadik had undeniably lied" and had received money for his testimony. "According to a statement by his brother, Sadik had called him from Paris in late summer and said, "I’ve become a millionaire!" (Der Spiegel)
Indeed; lying can be a profitable choice when it serves the greater objectives of American-Israeli foreign policy.
None of this suggests that Syrian intelligence wasn’t involved in the assassination. It very well may have been. It simply proves that the report of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is inconclusive and may have been the result of American coercion. At the very least, the report fits rather nicely with the Bush administration’s stated goals for regime change in Damascus and redrawing the map of the Middle East.
If Mehlis was truly serious about finding out who the assassins really are, rather than carrying out a political vendetta for the United States, he would be devoting more energy to uncovering the details related to the white Mitsubishi Canter Van that carried the explosives. The history and origins of this van, which was stolen in Japan on Oct. 12, 2004, are critical to the investigation as journalist Robert Parry points out in his recent article "The Dangerously incomplete Hariri Report". But, then, few who have been following the Hariri assassination have any misgivings about the real motives behind the Mehlis Report. The Hariri investigation is just the pretext for the forthcoming military action against Syria.