Not content with redacting portions of the Mehlis report that named Syrian President Assad’s brother in law and other high ranking Syrian nationals as assassins of Lebanese nationalist Rafiq Hariri, the United Nations has also suppressed a report from the Lebanese Medical Examiner in the case that shows a “70% probability” that the driver of the Mitsubishi truck that exploded last February 14 killing Hariri and 21 others was a Palestinian:

BEIRUT: The UN team investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri has disregarded a report by the Lebanese medical examiner Fouad Ayoub following a thorough investigation of its content.

Ayoub said a tooth was found belonging to a Palestinian whose remnants were subject to DNA analysis and is now believed to be the suicide bomber who drove the explosives laden Mitsubishi truck to the site of the explosion.

According to his report, these remnants belong to a 23rd corpse at the bomb site.

The bones of the corpse were found by a British diving team off the coast of the St. George Yacht Club, where the explosion occurred.

The remnants were matched with others found 100 meters away from the scene, on the premises of the Riviera Hotel.

Other forensic evidence that would point to a possible Palestinian connection to the assassination was also ignored:

The security sources also indicated the Swiss experts who took samples of explosives from the scene were able to determine the explosive used was C4.

C4 is commonly used in Eastern Europe, a region where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is known to have procured explosives in the past.

One of the names in the report not suppressed by the UN was the notorious head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Ahmad Jibreel. The PFLP Commander has been a thorn in the side of Israel for many years and is the author of dozens of terrorist attacks directed against the Jewish state.

Although suicide attacks in Lebanon were prevelant at one time, today they are all but unknown, the preferred method of assassination and terror being the remotely detonated bomb. The occurences of suicide bombings are rare enough that responsibility has usually been traced to factions in sympathy with the Palestinian cause; most notably Hizballah and the Amal Militia:

Modern suicide bombings was introduced by the Shi’ite terrorist organization Hizballah in 1983 in Lebanon, and it was in Lebanon that this modus operandi was refined throughout the 1980’s. During the 1990’s the attacks continued, but declined in frequency, until today, suicide attacks in Lebanon are a rare occurrence. All together, 50 suicide bombings were carried out in Lebanon, half of which were perpetrated by the Hizballah and Amal, and the remainder by secular communist and nationalist organizations, including the Lebanese Communist Party, the Socialist-Nasserist Organization, the Syrian Ba’ath Party, and the P.P.S.

The rise in the political power of Hizballah in Lebanon can be directly correlated with the drop in suicide attacks against other factions in Lebanese society. This presents an enormous problem for the US State Department in that they have named the so-called “Party of God” as a terrorist organization. The fact is that Hizballah political leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is one of the most popular and charismatic politicians in Lebanon. And despite his call for continued attacks agains the Jewish homeland, his influence in the government currently taking shape in Lebanon cannot be ignored. Even though UN Resolution 1559 calls for the disbanding of all militias, Nasrallah has so far refused to cooperate in disarming Hizballah’s military wing which has in the past worked side by side with Syrian intelligence to control the population.

How to disarm Hizballah and mitigate Nasrallah’s influence so that Lebanon doesn’t become a base for terrorist attacks against Israel is perhaps one of the biggest under reported stories in American foreign policy. It will test our resolve in the war against terror as well as prove to the rest of the world whether or not our deeds will match our rhetoric in this war.

And complicating this picture is the UN’s Mehlis report that now brings the issue of direct Syrian interference in the affiairs of the Lebanese state into stark relief. Could the Syrians have been in cahoots with Hizballah in the assassination? Such a revelation would roil the streets of Lebanon and tax the abilities of the new government to deal with such a crisis.

One curious note also via the Daily Star: They originally reported that it was not the UN that suppressed the names of Syrian nationals in the assassination plot but rather the US State Department who asked the names be redacted. I have seen no other media reports that implicate the State Department in the cover-up and the PDF version of the dead tree Daily Star story has been taken off their website.

For the UN to ignore the report from the on-scene pathologist so that they would not have to deal with the implications of Palestinian fingerprints on the assassination of a popular, non-sectarian politician shows to what length that international body will go to in kowtowing to the murderous thugs currently in control of the Palestinian cause.

Here’s the Daily Star’s story on the missing paragraphs from the Mehlis Report.