Rafiq al-Hariri, in memoriam

One year after the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, the picture is still quite blurred.

I took this picture on July 28, 2005 from a hot-air balloon in Beirut. On the left side of the picture, you can easily spot the site where the explosion happened, next to the once glorious Hotel Saint-Georges. It has been speculated that the explosive had been hidden under the road surface.

The crime scene has been sealed off to allow the inquiry of the "International Independent Investigation Commission established pursuant to [UN] Security Council Resolution 1595 (2005)" and avoid the tampering of any possible evidence.

These are two close-ups of the blast site that I realized on July 12, 2005:

Rafiq al-Hariri and his "companions" (his escort) are buried under a tensile structure outside of the al-Amin mosque, which was partly funded by al-Hariri himself.