"...Daniel Bellemare, may have lost control of his case, and those who leaked to Der Spiegel could well be pushing for its complete collapse"

Sorrowful uber-Arab neocon Michael Young, who is actually arguing that the SPIEGEL cartoon was concocted to HELP Damascus .... in the Daily Star, here

"....The differences between Malbrunot's article and Follath's are essential. In his article, Malbrunot cited "someone close to Saad Hariri", as well as "a source close to the [Internal Security Forces]" ... Significantly, however, the Hariri source did not believe that Hizbullah had carried out the Hariri assassination on its own initiative. "Who had the capacity to bring the equivalent of 1,200 kilos of TNT into Lebanon", the source asked, before answering: "Syria, a Lebanese security service working with it, and Hizbullah." The direction of Malbrunot's article was that the operation was Syrian, but that Hizbullah may have somehow been brought into it.

Follath's informants appear to be different. He says his information comes from sources "close to the tribunal and [was] verified by examining internal documents." In other words Follath's source appears not to be an employee of the tribunal, but someone who has contacts with it and access to documents the tribunal is working with. That leads to suspicion that the sources are Lebanese who, to corroborate their information, showed Follath Lebanese documents from, or on, the Eid investigation, copies of which must also be in the possession of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon - hence the vague formulation "internal documents."

Who would leak such documents, and why, remains to be seen. It seems improbable that this was done by a pro-Hariri source to affect Lebanon's upcoming elections. After spending four years accusing Syria, the Hariri camp is not about to exonerate Damascus for uncertain electoral gains. The broader conclusions reached by Follath are his own, however, and are poorly argued. Nothing in his piece allows him to make the jump and push the burden of responsibility for the killing on Hizbullah....

If Hizbullah did plan and execute the attack,... it would have taken such action without Syrian direction to do so - direction that only Bashar Assad, given the centralized nature of Syria's regime, would have signed off on.

Follath provides motives for the assassination that are laughable. He says that Hizbullah got rid of Hariri because his "growing popularity .....close ties to the West and to moderate Arab regimes, as well as "an opulent lifestyle, and a membership in the competing Sunni faith."

This is nonsense. Those who had an overriding motive to kill Hariri were the Syrians, because ... of Resolution 1559 ...

Follath, intentionally or unintentionally, is being used to draw the light away from Syria by casting it on Hizbullah. ...

These questions will continue to remain unanswered, and the tribunal process will continue to be open to manipulation, for as long as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon does not come out with a formal accusation. We are witnessing the consequences of a slipshod UN investigation since 2006. The prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, may have lost control of his case, and those who leaked to Der Spiegel could well be pushing for its complete collapse."