THE morning of Monday, February 14 — Valentine’s Day — last year was sunny and crisp in the throbbing heart of Beirut. Restaurants and nightclubs were preparing for a night of celebration. Downtown, as Beirutis called it, was renowned once more throughout the Middle East for its glitter after its resurrection from the ashes of civil war.

If there was one man who could claim to be the cause of this miracle it was Rafik Hariri, a construction millionaire-turned-politician, who had brokered the deal that ended 15 years of fighting and, as prime minister, organised the rebuilding of the downtown district.

That Valentine’s Day morning, Hariri attended a pre-election meeting in Lebanon’s parliament. Having resigned as prime minister after a confrontation with Syria — Lebanon’s neighbour, military occupier and power-broker — he was hoping to return to office with a large popular mandate.

After the meeting, he strolled to a pavement cafe for a chat with local journalists. He was in a cheerful mood but had to be at his Kuraytem Palace residence by 1pm for a gala lunch with 20 guests.

Hariri’s six-vehicle motorcade had three possible routes home. Minutes before departure, his head of security told the lead car to take the maritime route overlooking Beirut’s beaches — not difficult for people outside his inner circle to figure out for a man with an appointment to keep.

Hariri drove an armoured Mercedes. In front and on his flanks were cars manned by security officers and equipped with jamming devices. A Chevrolet ambulance manned by his personal paramedics brought up the rear.

The precautions were useless. At 12.56pm, as the motorcade passed the St George hotel on Minae Al-Hosn Street — another Hariri construction project — there was a huge explosion in a parked Mitsubishi van. Hariri was killed instantly; 21 others died. More than 220 people were injured and buildings collapsed.

Using 1,000lb of military explosives, the assassins had wiped out one of the few Arab leaders respected by the world’s most powerful men, including George W Bush and Jacques Chirac.

His death triggered not just mass anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut but also an anti-Syrian resolution at the United Nations, the victory of anti- Syrian parties in Lebanon’s general election, the forced withdrawal of Syrian troops and a UN investigation that implicated powerful Syrian security officials in the murder.

Yet a year on, this investigation has run into the sand. A key witness has recanted and another has been exposed as a conman. The chief investigator, Detlev Mehlis, has been replaced after presenting two reports that exposed evidence of Syrian collusion but fell short of providing real proof.

Far from being toppled, as some observers had predicted, Syria’s President Bashar al- Assad has organised a counterattack, undermining Mehlis and turning resistance to outside pressure into a national crusade. His regime remains a powerful player in Lebanon — as the burning of the Danish embassies in Beirut as well as Damascus in the cartoons protests demonstrated last week.

Four Lebanese generals are under arrest in the Hariri case but no Syrians, and the UN’s interrogation of Syrian officials has been inconclusive.

So who killed Hariri? Will the answer ever be known? Has the world moved on to new Middle East crises: Ariel Sharon’s stroke, Hamas’s election victory, Iran’s nuclear programme?

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