March 22, 2010 - Daily Star - STL 'probe' of Hizbullah members can 'create strife'

By Dalila Mahdawi
BEIRUT: A UN-backed tribunal set up to probe the killing of former Premier Rafik Hariri could “instigate trouble” after summoning Hizbullah members, a former minister said Saturday.
Wi’am Wahhab, leader of the Druze opposition Tawheed Movement and a close Syria ally, claimed investigators from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) had in the last few days questioned several Hizbullah members over the 2005 assassination of Hariri. “Problems could occur in the country because the investigating panel will create strife,” Wahab told Al-Jadeed TV, calling on Premier Saad Hariri to “avoid the trap set up by the tribunal.”
Wahhab’s allegations were neither confirmed nor denied by the STL media spokesperson Radhia Achouri, who has repeatedly told The Daily Star her office does not comment on media reports.
Achouri also said she would not remark on an An-Nahar report claiming that 11 STL investigators had recently arrived in Beirut to continue questioning witnesses.
But she told Naharnet last Wednesday the STL “always had” investigators in Beirut.
Meanwhile, Hizbullah MP Nawwaf Moussawi told Al-Jadeed his party “does not comment on everything that has to do with the tribunal,” though he added Hizbullah would “comment in due course.”
Media reports in the past have frequently tried to implicate Hizbullah in Hariri’s killing. A number of reports published by the German magazine Der Spiegel in the last year have claimed that special forces from Hizbullah planned and executed Hariri’s murder and that it was involved in cocaine smuggling across Europe. French daily Le Monde also published reports claiming Hizbullah had taken photographs of the STL headquarters in The Hague and that Der Spiegel’s claim the group had orchestrated the killing were “trustworthy.”