A JUDGE charged with investigating the assassination of Rafik Hairi, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, resigned yesterday. He said that he had been handed a case file containing no evidence nor any names of potential suspects.

The departure of Michel Abu Arraj is another blow to the Lebanese Government’s reputation. A series of bombings has increased fears of a return to the bloodshed of the 1975-90 civil war.

Al-Mustaqbal, the Lebanese daily newspaper, said that Abu Arraj was also incensed at having been handed a lawsuit that Jamil Sayyed, the head of the General Security Directorate, has brought against himself and other security chiefs in an attempt to clear them of involvement in Mr Hariri’s murder.

Abu Arraj’s resignation came as Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, said that a more thorough investigation into the murder may be needed. A UN report into Mr Hariri’s death on February 14 is to be released shortly and is expected to carry harsh criticism of the Lebanese Government’s handling of the investigation.

Mr Annan, addressing the Arab League meeting in Algiers, said that he expected to publish the report in the next few days. “A more comprehensive investigation may well also be necessary,” he said, strengthening the belief that the report will focus on the alleged lack of co-operation given by the Lebanese authorities to the UN team rather than on the assassination itself.

Opposition figures in Lebanon blame Syria and its Lebanese allies for Mr Hariri’s death in a huge bomb blast and have accused the authorities in Beirut of removing crucial evidence as part of a cover-up. Mass street protests and unrelenting international pressure have forced Damascus to begin the process of withdrawing its troops and military intelligence agents from Lebanon.

The Lebanese Government has said that Mr Hariri was killed by a suicide bomber who detonated his vehicle as the former Prime Minister’s motorcade swept by. A previously unknown Islamist group said in a video broadcast a few hours after the bombing that it had carried out a suicide attack because Mr Hariri supported the Saudi Government.

On March 4, a Lebanese judicial source claimed that a tape from a surveillance camera outside a branch of the HSBC bank proved that a suicide bomber caused the blast.

Yet the tape, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, does not show the blast. Mr Hariri’s motorcade is seen with other vehicles driving along the street before passing out of sight around the corner. The blast, which knocked the camera off its stand, occurred less than a second later.

The Lebanese Opposition believes that the explosion was caused by a bomb buried beneath the road during recent roadworks along the seafront corniche, which would suggest the involvement of the authorities.

The Lebanese authorities have been harshly criticised for their failure to protect the scene of the bombing. The 10ft-deep crater caused by the blast was rapidly filled in and the bodies of two victims of the blast were discovered only days later.

A senior European diplomat told The Times: “The people dealing with the site were not doing a proper investigation. There are powerful rumours that the authorities were tampering with the site and I find those rumours persuasive.”

In the country’s latest explosion, three people were killed in the Christian town of Kaslik, twelve miles north of Beirut, the second unclaimed bombing in five days.

Two Indians and a Sri Lankan died when a 42lb bomb exploded beneath a stairwell of the Alta Vista commercial centre. It shattered shopfronts and damaged nearby blocks of flats, sending residents on to the streets in their nightwear. This week a car bomb exploded in the Christian Beirut suburb of Jdeideh, wounding 11 people.

Georgette Rouphail, a resident, said as she swept up broken glass: “The Syrians and their acolytes want to punish us for calling for our freedom and the departure of their troops and intelligence agents.”

Fares Boueiz, an opposition MP and a former minister, said that the bomb was “a political message to the (anti-Syrian) independence uprising.”

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