ANSD : Special Tribunal defense focuses on dropped Taha investigation

SAT 23 - 11 - 2024

Date: Jun 27, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Special Tribunal defense focuses on dropped Taha investigation

_{Victoria Yan| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: Defense counsel David Young grilled former Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigator Michael Taylor Tuesday on decisions not to further look into Khaled Taha, a close friend of Ahmed Abu Adass. Immediately following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, a video prepared for Lebanon’s Al-Jazeera office showed Abu Adass confessing to the bombing. The young Palestinian resident of Beirut claimed to be a part of an extreme Sunni group named Nusra and Jihad in Greater Syria.

Naturally, Abu Adass became the lead suspect in the proceeding investigations, which were carried out by Lebanese authorities, the U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission and then the STL.

Ultimately, Abu Adass was ruled out as a suspect by investigators.

In their eyes, he had been a pawn, used by the true perpetrators of the assassination to make a false confession and throw off investigators.

As Abu Adass’ role in the investigation waned, his friends and family also became less important.

Khaled Taha, a close friend of Adass’, fell to the sidelines of the investigation, despite the fact that he had connections to Al-Qaeda.

Taha, also Palestinian, had phoned the residence of Abu Adass on the day of the latter’s disappearance. Furthermore, he was found to have left Lebanon for Syria the very same day.

Young, representing the interests of Assad Sabra, criticized the investigation. He argued investigators should have carried out further questioning in relation to Taha after one witness testified to having seen him and Abu Adass leaving the latter’s residence together on the day of Addas’ disappearance.

The testimony was a significant deviation from those given by others, who claimed to see Abu Adass leaving his residence with a different associate, named Mohammad.

According to investigators, Mohammad was an alias used by indicted individual Hassan Oneissi.

“Our account is that you stopped all investigation [into Taha] after a contradictory account was given.

“Not a single witness was questioned after [August 2010],” Young said, attempting to demonstrate negligence in the investigation.

Taylor responded the testimony given by the witness who mentioned Taha was found to be unreliable.

The testimony, he said, was riddled with “factual errors.” As a result, the investigative team did not deem it necessary to reinterview other witnesses to corroborate the veracity of the outlying testimony.

“This other person was unreliable; her facts were [wrong].

“To go back to [other witnesses] to ask them about someone who was already unreliable, I’m not sure that would have been a correct line of action. I was never encouraged or instructed to reinterview [them] on the basis of this [outlying] statement,” he said.

Taylor added that former witnesses had each been questioned up to 10 times. Since their testimonies had been corroborated, the investigative team found no reason to call them in again based on an “unreliable” outlying statement.

“At the end of the day, the evidence did not point to a Sunni extremist group, if [Taha] even was a Sunni extremist at all.

“After exhaustive investigations by the UNIIIC, Lebanese authorities and the [STL] on the actual crime events ... we don’t see any evidence that Taha was involved,” Taylor said. “We were objective. We did not find any evidence toward Taha.”

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