In indicting four members of Hizballah (who were apparently acting for Syria) for murdering former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) detailed how the plot was carried out. One aspect of this story tells more about the Middle East than a library full of books on the subject.

Two of those indicted — Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra — had the task of covering up the crime. How to avoid the revelation that Hizballah and Syria were behind this murder and others?

Their solution was to create a phony Sunni Islamist, al-Qaeda style group they called “Victory and Jihad in Greater Syria.” The hit team recruited a 22-year-old Palestinian named Abu Adass to record a video that bore all of the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation: a black flag was placed in the background, with writing similar to what’s found on al-Qaeda flags.

The Adass flag reads: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger” (the Islamic Shahadah, or statement of faith) with “God is greatest” underneath, and the fake organization’s name under that. A bearded and turbaned Adass read from a statement claiming responsibility. The video was then sent to Al Jazeera.

Adass has never been seen again and was presumably killed by Hizballah because he knew too much. Among those swallowing this deception was the author Nicholas Blanford who, in his book Killing Mr. Lebanon, concluded that the video’s authenticity was proven since it referred to the “Land of the two mosques,” a popular al-Qaeda euphemism for Saudi Arabia.

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