Rafic Hariri

Rafic Baha El Deen Al-Hariri (1 November 1944 – 14 February 2005) was the prime minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and from 2000 to 2004. He was assassinated in 2005.

Hariri in 2001

Quotes

• It's not a problem to put it up, It's a problem to take it down.
  • Talking about the posters that appeared everywhere in Lebanon, of Hafez al-Assad, 1993.[1]

• He(Yasser Arafat) was telling me about the situation he is living in. He said that all the buildings around his residence have been destroyed and they are -- they are on fire. And he told me that there is five people have been killed and they cannot move them. And about 40 persons were injured, and they cannot transfer them to the hospital.
  • Speaking to CNN, about the attack on Arafat's compound, Ramallah, 29 March 2002.[2]

• Yeah. Everybody has the right to defend himself, but by attacking headquarter of President Arafat, this will lead to -- to the security of Israel? I doubt that.
  • Answering to the question that if Israel has right to defend themselves, 29 march 2002.[3]

Quotes about Rafic Hariri

• Rafik [Hariri], a former prime minister and a prominent Sunni businessman, was assassinated in 2005, along with twenty-two others, when explosives hidden in a van were detonated as his motorcade drove near the St. Georges Hotel in Beirut. After a painful inquiry, the UN determined that the assassination was likely committed by members of Hezbollah with Syrian planning and logistical support. Hezbollah is the Shia political party and militant organization funded by Iran and Syria. Hariri's death was followed by a series of sectarian murders of other anti-Syrian politicians, compounding the long-standing frustration with Lebanon's failure to bring his killers to justice.
  • Janine di Giovanni "Lebanon: About to Blow?", The New York Review of Books (8 February 2018).
  • More specifically, the report was by the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission, as headed by investigator Detlev Mehlis (known as the Mehlis report).

• This murder of Hariri was deliberately planned and executed precisely to implicate Syria and to set in train the events which have unfolded.
  • George Galloway (13 November, 2005), as cited in "Galloway heaps praise on Syrian regime", The Scotsman (18 November 2005).
  • From a speech delivered at the University of Damascus, as televised on Al-Jazeera TV.

• Yet his political fortunes were always hostage to his up-and-down relations with Syria's presidents, now Bashar al-Assad and before him his father, Hafez al-Assad. For the most part, he appeared to steer an even course. Unlike some of the more impetuous Lebanese clan and religious leaders, Mr. Hariri carefully avoided direct criticism of Syria's role as Lebanon's overlord.
  • "Rafik Hariri, Ex-Premier of Lebanon, Dies at 60", The New York Times (15 February 2005).