Hariri, Nasrallah at Loggerheads Over Suspected Assassins, Shiite Sect
Former Premier Saad Hariri snapped back at Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah saying the party chief was seeking to put the entire Shiite sect in confrontation with his “fictitious schemes.”
“The accused are identified by name and Hizbullah is admitting that it is hiding them,” Hariri said in remarks to Future News TV late Wednesday about the four suspects accused of involvement in Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination.
“We will continue to live in a single nation. There is no meaning to playing with the emotions of the Shiites and putting them on alert against fictitious schemes which the Sayyed knows that they are mere fiction or an attempt to escape the truth,” Hariri said.
His remark came after Nasrallah said in a televised speech that the indictment published by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is “based on analysis and not clear evidence."
"Those who were indicted should not be called charged but unjustly treated," he said.
Nasrallah accused the court of aiming to "destroy the human and social fabric of Lebanon.”
“What’s happening now is an attempt at undermining and sabotaging the social fabric, paving the ground for wars and civil strife, dragging the resistance into (strife) and consequently striking the resistance and harming its credibility,” he said.
The Shiite party chief warned that some sides are seeking to “sabotage ties among the Lebanese sects.”
Much of the information contained in the indictment had been leaked to the media over the past two years, which Nasrallah said was a sign that the probe was tainted beyond repair.
The four suspects named in the indictment are Salim Ayyash, 47, Mustafa Badreddine, 50, Hussein Oneissi, 37 and Assad Sabra, 34.
In his remarks to Future News, Hariri addressed Nasrallah, saying “you are transferring the indictment in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination from the four party members to the entire Shiite sect in an attempt to distort facts.”
Earlier in the day, Hariri urged Nasrallah to cooperate with the tribunal.
"What is required of Hizbullah's leadership is simply to announce their disengagement with the accused. This stance will go down in history," he said in a statement released by his office.
The long-awaited international indictment which was unsealed Wednesday offers no direct evidence linking the four Hizbullah suspects to Hariri’s murder.
The indictment relies heavily on circumstantial evidence such as telephone records.
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