"The recent release of the four Lebanese generals by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) led journalists like Nicholas Blanford and Georges Malbrunot to discover new “intriguing questions” and to speculate about possible motives for the assassination.
I would like to point out that - without having to resort to speculation - it is possible to establish that members of the Nab’a/Taha cell, described in Malbrunot’s article as being allegedly involved in the assassination, had a personal motive for killing Rafiq Hariri: revenge. Hariri executed Salafi mujaheddin in 2004, who were close to them.
Badih Hamadeh belonged to the Dinniyeh group (1). So did Hassan Nab’a (2), emir of the cell that included the man who claimed the attack in a video statement, Ahmad Abu Adas (3). And so did Ahmed Salim Miqati (2), leader of another cell to which Adas was indirectly linked (4).
Prime Minister Hariri signed the execution order for Badih Hamedeh. Hariri’s predecessor as Prime Minister, Salim Hoss, had refused to sign their execution orders because he objected to the death penalty on moral grounds(5).
Hassan Nab’a’s brother Khader, also a member of his cell, was reportedly linked (6) to the assassination of al-Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi in 1995 for which three men were hanged in March 1997, among them Afghan veteran Ahmed al-Qassam (7). Two years later, four Sidon judges were killed in revenge (8).
The Dinniyeh group was founded by Afghan veteran Bassam al-Kanj, who died in clashes with the Lebanese army in the mountains of Dinniyeh in January 2000 (9). Ahmed Miqati escaped to the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh (10), whereas Hassan Nab’a fled to Syria (11). Both Miqati and Nab’a were reportedly in contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (12), who knew the latter from Afghanistan (13).
In July 2002, Badih Hamadeh shot and killed three intelligence officers, who had wanted to ask him about his links to the Dinniyeh group (1). Ahmed Miqati sheltered him in Ain al-Hilweh (10), but members of other extremist groups, fearing for the safety of their operations in the camp, handed him over to the authorities (14). The Dinniyeh militants reacted by placing a bomb in the Sidon mosque of Sheikh Maher Hammud who had delivered Hamadeh to the authorities (15).
Ahmed Miqati reappeared in 2004 when a plot by his cell was uncovered that intended to blow up several targets in downtown Beirut, including the Italian embassy (16). Some observers like Nicholas Blanford and Jihad al-Kazen have speculated that this may have been the first attempt to kill Hariri because he liked to meet journalists in a café just opposite the Italian embassy building (17).
It is interesting that, according to some reports, the Palace of Justice was also on the list of targets (16). The trial of Badih Hamadeh, his fiancée and her mother was held at a military tribunal in Beirut (10).
On February 1, 2006, Al-Balad received a telephone call from a man claiming to speak on behalf of al-Qa’ida. The caller announced that a security target would be bombed in retaliation for the arrest of the Nab’a/Taha cell (subsequently a small bomb exploded at the Fakhreddine barracks in Beirut). He also demanded the release of Badih Hamadeh’s fiancée and her mother (18). The call was traced to a public phone booth in Ain al-Hilweh (19).
In October 2007, Fida’ ‘Itani published in Al-Akhbar what was said to be the testimony of a Saudi member of Nab’a’s cell, Faisal Akbar (20). He first confesses to having taken part in the filming of the videotape containing the claim of responsibility by Ahmed Abu Adas. Then he retracts his testimony. Concerning the video by Adas, he declares that Hassan Nab’a had told him that Hariri was responsible for signing the execution orders in the Nizar al-Halabi case. He also explicitly mentions Badi’ (Hamadeh) (21).
The statement read by Ahmed Abu Adas does cite the intention to “avenge” the deaths of “martyrs who were killed by security forces” in Saudi Arabia as one of the reasons for the attack (22). Unfortunately, I was unable to find a complete transcript of the statement.
In the final part of Faisal Akbar’s testimony, he also describes a file found on the computers of Khaled Taha and other members of the cell as a sophisticated bomb-making course by Isma’il al-Khatib (23), indicating the existence of a link between the Miqati/al-Khatib cell and the Nab’a/Taha cell.
Ahmad Abu Adas worked at a computer shop owned in part by Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sani, a member of the Miqati/al-Khatib cell, in the summer of 2004 (4). Ahmad ‘Isaam al-Saani’a was among those arrested when the plot was uncovered in September 2004 (24). It is possible that at that time Adas was already in contact with extremist groups in Ain al-Hilweh and at Al-Huri mosque, where he sometimes led prayers and where he met Khaled Midhat Taha (25).
Coincidentally, Al-Huri mosque is also the place where Ahmed al-Qassam, Khalid Hamid and Munir Abbud clashed with the Ahbash some years earlier (7), before they were arrested and executed for the assassination of Nizar al-Halabi.
When Bassam al-Kanj visited Lebanon in 1994, he met with several Afghan veterans, among them Ahmed al-Qassam who introduced him to Abu Obeida (26), the deputy leader of Usbat al-Ansar, the same Abu Obeida (Jihad Mustafa) whom Ahmad Abu Adas visited in Ain al-Hilweh years later, according to the first Mehlis report (27). Ahmed al-Qassam went on to serve as liaison between Bassam al-Kanj, the nucleus of the Dinniyeh group in Tripoli and Beirut and Abu Obeida’s group in Ain al-Hilweh until he was executed in 1997 (28).
In conclusion, it is important to stress that while this group did have a motive, that does not automatically mean that they did it, or that this motive was the reason why they did it...."
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