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 approximately 2030 hours, on 14 February, the father, mother and younger sister surrendered themselves to the police, at which time all three were arrested. The parents were detained for approximately seven days but the sister was released after the second day. The investigation of Mr. Abu Adas included the arrest and interviewing of the family, interviewing of friends, examination of telephone records, and a search of the home of his parents where he had also lived. Information from the investigation showed that Mr. Abu Adas had a computer at his home, which was seized as part of the investigation. The seized items included 11 videotapes, 55 CDs, 1 floppy disk and a computer hard drive. Other than subversive information/data allegedly found on the hard drive, there was very little indication that Mr. Abu Adas had subversive or violent tendencies.

43. The investigation into this aspect of the crime showed the following flaws:

(a) The officers leading the investigation assured the Mission that Mr. Abu Adas had Internet access from his home and that the information contained on the hard drive of the computer had been downloaded directly onto the computer at his home. Enquiries carried out by the Mission have established that Mr. Abu Adas did not have Internet access from his home and could not have accessed the suggested sites from his personal computer. Enquiries carried out by the Mission indicate that the investigating security forces did not canvass or carry out enquiries at local cybercafes with a view to determining the origin of the alleged data located on the computer of Mr. Abu Adas;

(b) There is little evidence to support the theory that Mr. Abu Adas had militant/extremist tendencies;

(c) There is no evidence that Mr. Abu Adas had planned his departure or that he would not be returning, at the time that he left home on 16 January 2005;

(d) There is no intelligence available on the existence of the group Nasra and Jihad in Greater Syria before or after the explosion;

(e) This assassination would have required access to considerable finance, military precision in its execution and substantial logistic support and would have been beyond the capacity of any single individual or small terrorist group. There is no evidence suggesting that Mr. Abu Adas could have had the capacity to plan and execute this assassination on his own, nor did he have the financial capability.

The suspect vehicle
44. A branch of HSBC bank is located close to the scene of the explosion. The bank operates its own CCTV security system which recorded the movements of the Hariri convoy immediately prior to the explosion but did not record the events at the scene of the explosion itself. Copies of the recordings of this CCTV system were taken by a number of Lebanese security agencies some time after the investigation had been initiated. On close scrutiny, the recorded footage showed a white pickup truck entering the area of the explosion shortly before Mr. Hariri’s convoy. The recording clearly showed that this white pickup truck had been moving approximately six times slower than all other vehicles traversing the same stretch of roadway. A time-series analysis showed that, for the 50-60 metres of road covered by the camera, a normal car would take from three to four seconds to cover the distance, while a large truck would take from five to six seconds to travel the distance. The suspect white pickup truck took approximately 22 seconds to travel