Hizbollah hands over Hariri evidence to Lebanon

The government has turned over the findings to a UN panel investigating the killing of the former prime minister.

BEIRUT // Hizbollah surrendered data allegedly implicating Israel in the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri to the Lebanese government, which in turn gave it to a UN court probing the killing, sources said. "Hizbollah official Wafiq Safa today gave Lebanese Prosecutor General Said Mirza the data requested by the prosecutor of the (UN-backed) Special Tribunal for Lebanon," a judicial source told AFP. "The data has been transferred to the Beirut office of tribunal prosecutor Daniel Bellemare," the source added. Hizbollah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi confirmed to AFP that his party had submitted "documents" to Lebanon's judiciary after a meeting between Hizbollah officials and Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of the slain ex-premier. He would not give further details on the documents. Bellemare called on Lebanese authorities to submit all material related to the murder in the possession of Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who claims his arch-foe Israel was behind the February 14, 2005 bomb that killed Hariri and 22 others. The request came days after Nasrallah produced several undated clips of aerial views of several areas in Lebanon which he alleged were intercepted from unmanned Israeli surveillance drones. The clips included footage of the site of the Hariri assassination in mainly Sunni west Beirut, shot several years before the murder. Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah is facing increasing pressure amid reports that the UN tribunal is set to accuse several of its members. Nasrallah has warned against implicating his Shiite movement in the Hariri assassination, slamming the UN investigation as an "Israeli project." The murder triggered an international outcry and led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in April 2005 after a deployment of almost three decades. The killing has been widely blamed on Syria, but Damascus has consistently denied involvement. * Agence France-Presse