TIME magazine chief editor Howard Chua-Eoan sent an email to Future News TV confirming that the interview with one of the people indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is true.
In the email, Chua-Eoan said that the magazine “stands by the interview ‘Accused Hizballah Man Speaks’ published at TIME.com on Aug. 19, 2011.
In the interview the Hezbollah member indicted in the murder of Hariri boasted : “The Lebanese authorities know where I live, and if they wanted to arrest me they would have done it a long time ago. Simply, they cannot.”
Four Hezbollah members have been indicted by the STL. However, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Shiite group strongly denied the charges and refused to cooperate with the court.
Fatfat
March 14 MP Ahmad Fatfat said on Saturday that if the TIME magazine interview is true, “this means that Hezbollah is defying the Lebanese state and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.”
Fatfat told LBC television “he hopes the interview is untrue, because if it is true this would be an additional accusation against Hezbollah.”
The MP also criticized Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s political handling of the STL, asking, “If Mikati really supports the STL then why hasn’t the government paid Lebanon’s financial dues to it?”
Hezbollah denies
Hezbollah denied on Saturday that TIME magazine interviewed one of its members who is a suspect Hariri’s assassination, National News Agency reported.
Hezbollah issued a statement that “no official from the party ever met with the TIME magazine correspondent,” adding that the magazine’s report is “totally false.”
“It seems that the story is one of the STL’s fabrications.”
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