BEIRUT: Hezbollah provided a technical video of the assassination site taken after the explosion to the chief of Rafik Hariri’s security entourage, Mustapha Nasser told the STL Wednesday, allegedly to facilitate a future probe into the bombing. Nasser, an adviser of the late prime minister, said Hussein Khalil, an aide to Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, showed the video to Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan, who served as the head of Hariri’s security entourage. Nasser said he was present when the officials met.
“This happened a few weeks after the assassination, I don’t recall when, but it happened in one of the offices of Hajj Hussein [Khalil] in [Beirut’s] southern suburbs,” said Nasser via a video link from Lebanon. It was his third and final day of testimony, and involved a cross-examination by the defense counsel.
Nasser said the film was technical in nature and had been prepared by a member of Hezbollah. “By technical I mean [it showed] the place where the explosion happened, the depth of the crater, the width.”
He said he could not recall how long the film was, but said he believed it was part of an attempt by Hezbollah to facilitate a future probe into Hariri’s killing. The STL has indicted five Hezbollah members for the blast that killed Hariri and 21 others on Feb. 14, 2005.
Nasser said Khalil proposed that Hasan gives the video to Nazek Hariri, the late prime minister’s widow, but said he did not know whether Hasan he had ultimately done so. Hasan, who later became the head of the Internal Security Forces Information Branch, was killed by a car bomb in Ashrafieh in October 2012.
Nasser worked as an aide for Rafik Hariri, acting primarily as a liaison between the former prime minister and Hezbollah. Up until 2010, he played a similar role for Saad Hariri, who succeeded his late father as head of the Future Movement in 2005.
Nasser said that Nasrallah had visited Damascus on the fourth or fifth day after Hariri’s assassination and received a promise from Syrian President Bashar Assad that he would back the formation of an Arab tribunal to investigate the crime.
Nasser said the trip came after the Hariri family asked Nasrallah to help form a tribunal when he visited them to pay his condolences.
Nasser said Nasrallah later dictated a letter to him in which he said that he had met with Assad and that the Syrian president had agreed to support the establishment of an Arab tribunal.
Nasser said he flew to Riyadh the same day, and read the letter to Saad Hariri and his brother Bahaa.
“I sat with Saad and Bahaa and passed them the letter, but the result was [that they said], ‘We want an international tribunal.’”
While answering all the questions posed to him, Nasser refused to divulge which floor his Beirut apartment was on, arguing that it could have security implications.
Graham Cameron, the prosecution’s senior trial counsel, pointed to a contradiction in Nasser’s testimony during his three days on the stand.
Cameron said that while Nasser claimed that he lacked understanding of the relationship between Hariri and the Syrian regime, he had said that the Syrians knew Hariri was a man of dialogue and not confrontation, and that there was history of successful dialogue and negotiations between Hariri and Syria.
“How you could know that?” Cameron asked.
“Those are things that all journalists in Lebanon know,” Nasser said in reply.
Attorney Antoine Korkmaz, who represents the interests of Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine, asked Nasser whether Hariri felt personally under threat from jihadi groups based in Lebanon, given his personal relations with Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah.
Nasser replied, “I have no information whatsoever about this topic.”
Nasser did explain that he had been tasked with organizing Hariri’s visit to Iran in 1997, coordinating with then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and following up on Hariri’s investments in the Islamic Republic.
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