Brammertz visits Damascus ahead of UN probe report

Daily Star, Brammertz visits Damascus ahead of UN probe report, July 05, 2007

By Rym Ghazal

BEIRUT: Chief UN investigator Serge Brammertz, who heads the probe into former Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination, traveled to Syria Wednesday morning and returned several hours later to Beirut. The National News Agency said on Wednesday that Brammertz, along with a team of investigators, crossed the Masnaa border checkpoint at 9 a.m. and then returned to Lebanon in "early afternoon."
Security sources told The Daily Star that his visit to Syria is probably tied to the fact the UN investigator is expected to publish this month the eighth report into the killing of Hariri and 22 others in a massive bombing on the Beirut seafront on February 2005.
The latest report will be the first one presented to UN Security Council since the council approved the formation of an international court to try suspects in the killing.
In his last report in March, Brammertz requested his mandate to be extended beyond its June expiration and described the possible political motives behind the Hariri assassination.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon extended the appointment of Brammertz as the head of the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC), through December 31 this year.
Also in the last report, the seventh to be presented to the UN Security Council, Brammertz said that Syria had cooperated with the probe.
The ruling coalition accuses Syria of being behind the killing. But Damascus had repeatedly denied any involvement.
In April 2005 the Security Council set up the IIIC after an earlier UN mission found that Lebanon's own inquiry into the Hariri assassination had been seriously flawed.
Brammertz told the council last September that evidence obtained so far suggests that a young, male suicide bomber, probably non-Lebanese, detonated up to 1,800 kilograms of explosives inside a van to assassinate Hariri.