Who Killed Lebanon's Rafik Hariri?

By Christopher Bollyn
21 November 2006

The evidence from the crime scene indicated the possibility that an air-launched missile had targeted Hariri's car and left a large crater in the road.  "The evidence," I wrote shortly after the murder, "indicates that the Hariri bombing may have been a missile attack from the air."

Hariri may have been killed, I said, by the well-known Israeli method of "targeted killing," which the Israeli military has perfected and used to assassinate scores of Palestinian resistance leaders.  A 1,000 lb. precision-guided bomb with delayed fusing, for example, could have been used to target Hariri's vehicle and would fit the available evidence.  It would also explain the huge crater seen in the roadway.

Penetrating bombs with delayed fusing appear to have been used in some of the larger false flag terror attacks in Iraq as well as in the massive bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

In these events the shape and size of the crater provides crucial forensic evidence that should be examined to determine the type of bomb – or missile that was used.

The forensic evidence from these attacks, however, is seldom explained or scrutinized by the controlled media, which dutifully labels any bombing in the Middle East as having been done by a "suicide bomber" or a car bomb.

The latest UN Commissioner's report about the Hariri assassination by Serge Brammertz, the former national prosecutor of Belgium, mentions for the first time the aerial missile theory as a possible explanation:  "A new hypothesis relating to an aerial delivery means as a method of causing the explosion, advanced to the Commission recently, is being examined for its validity," the fifth report of the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) said.

Here is the latest UN report on Hariri "investigation":
http://www.al-bab.com/Arab/docs/lebanon/brammertz3.htm 

If the "aerial delivery theory" were to be pursued, investigated, and proven to be correct, it would reduce the number of possible culprits and exclude the Syrian government as a suspect.  The only nations that could carry out an aerial attack are those having highly advanced air forces and access to the most advanced precision-guided missiles.  In that were the case, the prime suspects in the Hariri murder would have to include the United States and Israel.  Israel would have to be at the top of the list.

The other hypothesis being examined by the commission is the "large car bomb" theory, which proposes that a Mitsubishi van carrying some 1,800 kg of explosives was responsible for the blast that killed Hariri and 22 others in the area.

THE EVIDENCE

The real question facing investigators is which of these two hypotheses is supported by the evidence.  Key evidence from the crime scene is found in and around the large crater in the road that was excavated by the blast is about 40 feet across by 10 feet deep.

The latest report from Brammertz, dated 25 September 2006, discusses the amounts of explosives and says that a previous report "suggested that the amount used to produce a crater of the size" would be "approximately 500 kg [1,100 lbs.] of TNT equivalent, if the IED [improvised explosive device] was placed at 1.7 m [about 6 feet] under the ground; or 1,200 kg [2,640 lbs.] of TNT equivalent if placed just above the ground; or 1,800 kg [3,960 lbs.] of TNT equivalent if the IED was approximately 0.80 m [31 inches] above the ground."

It should be noted that the 1,800 kg estimate given in the Brammertz report for the size of the car bomb is ridiculously low.  A Russian study of surface explosions in different media indicates that a minimum of 5 to 10 metric tons of TNT would have been required to create the crater.  A metric ton is 1,000 kg or 2,200 lbs.  The actual size of the amount of explosives required to create such a crater, 5,000 to 10,000 kg, suggests that the UN investigators car bomb theory is extremely unlikely.

Keith A. Holsapple, an expert on craters at the University of Washington, examined the photographs of the Beirut crater for my initial research into the murder of Hariri. "There is no doubt," Holsapple said, "at least a several ton bomb would be required if it were delivered by a vehicle and detonated above the surface."

"If a penetrator weapon was used," Holsapple said, "the weight would be on the order of 1 ton, to within a factor of two." A penetrator weapon is an aerial bomb, such as a bunker-buster type, which is a guided weapon that is designed to penetrate the surface before exploding.

There are several other clues seen at the crater that argue against or disprove the truck bomb theory.  The first is that the crater appears to have been excavated rather than pressed down.  This would suggest that the explosion occurred at some depth below the surface and created the crater by blasting the sand beneath the road upwards.

A photograph taken of the plume rising from the explosion would seem to corroborate this theory.  It shows a light sandy colored plume at the top, which indicates that the detonation occurred in the sand under the street of Hariri's motorcade. The first thing that was thrown up into the air was the sand in which the detonation occurred.

Photographs of the crater also show that pipes from below the street have been thrown upwards.  This evidence supports the theory that the crater was caused by a detonation below the road.

Then there is the damaged car which is seen standing next to the crater.  If a truck bomb with several tons of explosives had created the massive crater, it seems highly unlikely that there would have been very much left of this car or that it would still be standing at the crater's edge.

The UN investigation also has a serious credibility problem because it appears to be more political than anything else.  Jürgen Cain Külbel, a former East German criminal investigator turned journalist exposed the fraudulent UN "investigators" in an interview with Silvia Cattori for Voltairenet: