BEIRUT: Over the clanking of china and cutlery, the voice of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri rang out clearly at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Wednesday.
The prosecution played an audio recording from a lunch meeting between Hariri, newspaperman Charles Ayoub and Rustom Ghazaleh, Syria’s top intelligence officer in Lebanon in January 2005, giving the public a rare look into the labyrinth of Lebanese politics.
“I’m in pain for my country,” Hariri told Ghazaleh in a strained, formal tone. “We’re living ... like a bathhouse with no running water.”
The meeting was held as Hariri’s relationship with the Syrian regime continued to deteriorate in the wake of his resignation as prime minister in October the year before. After resigning, Hariri had been quietly bucking against Syria’s political influence in Lebanon.
“I am completely convinced that Lebanon cannot be ruled without Syria’s consent or Syria’s will,” Hariri said. “Now, perhaps the Lebanese should have a bigger role in ruling their country.”
While the statesman maintained upright politeness during the conversation, just four weeks later Hariri was assassinated in a massive car bomb and Ghazaleh emerged as a major figure in the investigation.
Prosecutors at the U.N.-backed STL have charged five Hezbollah members for Hariri’s assassination while concertedly insinuating that the Syrian regime saw Hariri as a major threat to its authority in Lebanon.
The link between Hezbollah and Syria was made explicitly clear in the testimony of Hariri’s economic adviser MP Ghazi Youssef Wednesday.
Prior to Hariri’s assassination, “there was full cooperation between the Syrian intelligence and the security apparatus of Hezbollah,” Youssef testified. “They worked hand in hand.”
“We all knew that [Hezbollah’s] source of weapons was ... through the Syrian borders,” Youssef added.
When criminal inquiries led to Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah is highly popular, arrests were unlikely, Youssef claimed. “There were arrests by the intelligence forces in different areas ... Many people were pursued in Beirut, in Ashrafieh, in Ras Beirut, in Mazraa, in Ain al-Mreisseh but we never heard about such arrests of persons or criminal groups in Dahiyeh [Beirut’s southern suburbs],” he said.
The Syrian influence was acutely felt in the political realm, a topic that Ghazaleh and Hariri broached over lunch. Hariri, upset by the efforts of pro-Syrian officials to gerrymander electoral districts ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for spring, told Ghazaleh that it would be impossible for the Syrians to maintain sway over Parliament without his support and that of MP Walid Jumblatt.
“If you want a majority in Parliament outside the circles of Rafik Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, you will not achieve it,” Hariri told him as the meal came to a close.
Both Hariri and Ghazaleh maintained an air of civility during their talks.
“I don’t have that drive to return as prime minister,” Hariri told Ghazaleh. Youssef testified earlier this week that by January 2005 Hariri was working on a plan to sweep the upcoming parliamentary elections and become prime minister once again in a “peaceful coup” against Syrian influence.
In turn, Ghazaleh sought to assure Hariri that he remained well-regarded in Syria despite any political differences with the regime.
“We in Syria love you. You are a comrade in arms and a comrade in the struggle. The president respects you,” Ghazaleh assured Hariri in turn.
But an investigation into the Hariri assassination published in 2005 includes another taped conversation between Ghazaleh and an unnamed Lebanese politician, in which the Syrian intelligence officer expresses clear disdain for Hariri. “What do I care about him [Hariri]? The president can’t stand him so why should I?”
In court Wednesday, Youssef stressed that the vision he and Hariri shared for Lebanon was fundamentally at odds with the logic of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime.
Youssef said that when he was a potential candidate for the minister of foreign affairs after Hariri’s assassination, he met Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah somewhere in the middle of a maze of narrow streets in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
After explaining his hopes for a “free, independent” Lebanon, Youssef said that Nasrallah had a different vision. “As minister of foreign affairs he [Nasrallah] wanted me to fight along their side, to fight along Syria and Iran,” Youssef testified.
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