Lebanon's interior minister alluded that Syrian President Bashar Assad orchestrated the assassination ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri during a speech Friday.
"Bashar Assad had direct contact with the people that killed the martyr Rafik Hariri," Nouhad Machnouk told a crowd at the Phoenicia Hotel.
A day earlier, defense lawyers at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, tasked with prosecuting those responsible for the 2005 bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others, said they had received evidence linking Assad's phone to the case.
Machnouk made his remarks during a conference organized by peace-building NGO international Alert and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
The conference is focused on the findings of a report on Lebanese people's perception of the security situation.
Machnouk slammed the findings of the report and also blamed the people's lack of trust in the state on the period of Syrian tutelage in Lebanon, 1991-2005.
"While the Syrians were in Lebanon, they intentionally did not build a state."
