Lebanese Leader's Killing Probably a Suicide Bombing, U.N. Finds 
By Warren Hoge
June 11, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/middleeast/11nations.html

UNITED NATIONS, June 10 — The head of the United Nations inquiry into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, said Saturday that he was making considerable progress and had established the case was most likely a suicide bombing, but he revealed nothing new about who was behind the killing.
In a 30-page report delivered to Secretary General Kofi Annan and the 15 members of the Security Council on Saturday afternoon, the official, Serge Brammertz, said that Syria, which has been accused in past reports of involvement in the killing and of thwarting the United Nations investigation, was offering generally satisfactory cooperation.
He confirmed that he had interviewed Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, who had earlier refused such requests, and he said Damascus had provided timely access to individuals and documents.
Mr. Brammertz endorsed a Lebanese government request for a one-year extension of the year-old inquiry, and added that full and unconditional cooperation from Syria to the commission remains crucial. He is scheduled to brief the Security Council on Wednesday, a day before the inquiry's current mandate expires.
Mr. Hariri, a Lebanese politician opposed to Syrian domination of his country, was killed along with 22 others when a bomb exploded as his convoy was moving along a downtown Beirut street on Feb. 14, 2005. The public outrage and mass street demonstrations that followed led Syria to comply with international demands and a Security Council resolution calling on it to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after a 29-year presence.
Mr. Brammertz, a Belgian on leave as deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said that the investigation had painstakingly recreated the killing through three-dimensional models, animation, sound-blast recordings, forensic studies, seismological data, DNA analysis of body fragments, fingerprint research, debris trajectories, telephone analysis, the use of closed-camera footage and examination of 1,900 exhibits.
Mr. Brammertz's predecessor in the job, Detlev Mehlis of Germany, had complained that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials had deliberately tampered with the site, covering over a crater and removing crucial evidence.
Mr. Brammertz said his preliminary conclusion was that a bomb with a charge equivalent to at least 1,200 kilograms of TNT had been placed in a Mitsubishi truck, and detonated by a man either in the vehicle or near it, as Mr. Hariri's convoy passed by. He said he preferred not to describe the man as a suicide bomber because it was not known whether he had been a willing accomplice or coerced.
He said that the size of the charge was much larger than that associated with a targeted assassination, showing that the killers meant their attack to be elevated to an almost 'guarantee' level.
He said there were still two hypotheses about the execution of the attack: either it was done in a compartmentalized way where conspirators did not know one another, or was done by a small and disciplined group aware of every stage of the operation.
He also said that 14 other bomb attacks in Lebanon that his commission was asked to study showed some similarities with the attack on Mr. Hariri.
The report was the second from Mr. Brammertz, and stuck to the judicious and technical tone of his first. Mr. Mehlis, by contrast, produced accounts that read like crime narratives and pointedly accused Syrian intelligence forces of directing the attack and obstructing his inquiry.
Mr. Brammertz did not include mention death threats against himself the way Mr. Mehlis did. But he said security was a high priority, explaining, The focus of the investigation increases the probability of individuals or groups attempting to execute threats against the commission or its personnel, for the purpose of disrupting its mandate.