Executive Summary: U.N. Report on Hariri Killing

March 25, 2005 — -- U.N. officials issued a report from a fact-finding mission into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The report did not directly assign blame for the former prime minister's death, but it did say Syria was to blame for the political tensions that existed in Lebanon prior to the attack.

Hariri was killed in a Feb. 14 bombing that killed 17 others on a Beirut seafront street. Many Lebanese blame Syria and its allied Lebanese government for the slaying of Hariri, an opponent of Syrian domination. Syrian officials have agreed to remove 14,000 troops now in Lebanon, but have strongly denied orchestrating the assassination of Hariri.

Following is the text of the executive summary of the U.N. report:

On 14 February 2005, an explosion in downtown Beirut killed twenty persons, among them the former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri. The United Nations' Secretary-General dispatched a Fact-Finding Mission to Beirut to inquire into the causes, the circumstances and the consequences of this assassination. Since it arrived in Beirut on 25 February, the Mission met with a large number of Lebanese officials and representatives of different political groups, performed a thorough review of the Lebanese investigation and legal proceedings, examined the crime scene and the evidence collected by the local police, collected and analyzed samples from the crime scene, and interviewed some witnesses in relation to the crime.

The specific 'causes' for the assassination of Mr. Hariri cannot be reliably asserted until after the perpetrators of this crime are brought to justice. However, it is clear that the assassination took place in a political and security context marked by an acute polarization around the Syrian influence in Lebanon and a failure of the Lebanese State to provide adequate protection for its citizens.