Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri informed a UN commission Syria was behind his father's killing, according to a leaked recording of a 2007 meeting between Hariri and an investigator probing the case. In the audio-tape, aired late Sunday on Lebanese television and authenticated by Hariri's office, the acting premier singled out a string of Syrian officials he held responsible for the 2005 bombing that killed his father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, and 22 others.
The leak also featured the normally reserved Hariri openly accusing Syrian leaders of blackmailing his father and slamming President Bashar al-Assad as an "idiot". In the recording, Hariri tells investigator Lajmi Mohammad Ali in a meeting on July 30, 2007 that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned his father he was "walking on dangerous ground" weeks before his death.
"If you ask me how it (the assassination) happened and why it happened, I think that Assef Shawkat and Maher (al-Assad) had a huge role in the preparation ... in pushing (Syrian President) Bashar (al-Assad) to take that decision," Hariri said in English. Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law, is Syria's military intelligence chief. Maher al-Assad is the brother of the Syrian president and former head of the presidential guard. The tape was aired by New TV, which is close to Hezbollah, on the eve of indictments set to be submitted by the prosecutor of the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is investigating Hariri's murder.