backed Lebanon tribunal said on Friday it pursued investigations into three bomb attacks which it believes are connected to a separate bombing which killed Lebanese politician Rafiq Al-Hariri in 2005. Daniel Fransen, the pre-trial judge for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), ordered the Lebanese authorities to hand over information about the attacks and assassination attempts on three other politicians — Marwan Hamadeh, George Hawi and Elias Al-Murr. Hamadeh is a former telecoms minister who survived an assassination attempt in 2004 while Al-Murr, a former deputy prime minister and former defense minister, was wounded in a bombing in 2005. Hawi, a former Communist Party chief and critic of Syria, was killed by a bomb in his car in Beirut in 2005. “The (STL) prosecutor had presented prima facie evidence that each of the three cases are connected (to the Hariri killing), and are thus within the tribunal's jurisdiction,” the court said in a statement. The tribunal issued sealed arrest warrants for four members of the group Hezbollah in June over the assassination of Hariri, a billionaire politician and one time prime minister. However, none of the four has been detained by Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, says they will never be arrested. Meanwhile, Canada's security service identified possible Hezbollah reprisals over Hariri murder indictments as a national security threat, said a report Thursday. A classified document cited by the Montreal French-language daily La Presse, entitled “Special Tribunal for Lebanon: does Hezbollah have recourse for violence in 2011?” outlines the concerns of Canada's Integrated Threat Assessment Center. The UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of Hariri indicted Salim Ayyash, 47, Mustafa Badreddine, 50, Hussein Anaissi, 37 and Assad Sabra, 34, for the February 14, 2005 suicide car bomb attack in Beirut that killed Hariri and 22 others. All four are members of Hezbollah, which is now a key player in Lebanon's coalition government and has refused to allow the arrest of the four suspects. The STL prosecutor in the case, Daniel Bellemare, is Canadian. Two dozen of his compatriots also work for the tribunal. “Many Lebanese see the STL's investigation as being run by Canadians since it is headed by a Canadian,” the said Integrated Threat Assessment Center document penned in March.
