Mick Hartley

Who was responsible for the 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri? Was it Syria, as most people assumed at the time? Or was it Hezbollah, as the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon concluded last month? Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has denied responsibility. As, of course, he would. He's already on record blaming Israel. 

And now who turns up to give support to Nasrallah's view? Why, it's our very own George Galloway, on Lebanese TV last week:

I support the government of Lebanon's rejection of the fake indictment [for the Al-Hariri assassination]. I know it is fake because we are now into the third incarnation of the identity of the criminals who killed the marrty Rafiq Al-Hariri. The first accusation was against Syria. The second accusation was against Hizbullah. Now all the hostility against the Syrian regime is coming back, and we are returning to accusations of the Syrian regime and of Hizbullah.

This inquiry looked everywhere, except the most obvious place – Israel. Israel was the only country with any interest and any benefit to gain from the assassination of the martyr Rafiq Al-Hariri. They are the ones who had the capability to do so, they are the ones who had the motive for doing so, and they are the ones who had the criminal record for doing so. How many hundreds of people has Israel killed in Lebanon? Assassination squads of people landing on the beach, and people planting bombs of one kind or another.

When this inquiry refused to lead in that direction, I knew it was a fake inquiry. This was a lynch mob, as they say in the United States – when people used to go looking for a black man to hang, when people used to go looking for a black man to hang, irrespective of who committed the crime. But this process and all these individuals are completely discredited.

Gorgeous George indeed.