The ‘playboy’ who masterminded prime minister’s assassination

Mustafa Badreddine was known to friends as “Zulfikar”, the name of the double-tipped sword the Prophet Mohammed gave to his son-in-law Ali. He, and his remarkable double-tipped life, would be almost invisible if it had not been for a stash of telephone records delivered to a UN tribunal. The tribunal is investigating the death of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in an enormous car bomb in Beirut in 2005. The phone records showed the interlinking calls of the Hizbollah operatives accused – in absentia – of responsibility.

The most remarkable single discovery was that many of the calls made by the cell went to phones apparently belonging to a man named Sami Issa, a Christian jeweller known for his playboy lifestyle in the resort town of Jounieh, north of Beirut. Issa kept a string of girlfriends – Muslim and Christian alike – ferrying them around in his Mercedes and entertaining them on his yacht. But Issa, the phone records showed conclusively, was just one of several aliases for Badreddine, who turned out to have 13 phones.

Several of these phone numbers travelled around the country together; none ever called each other. Some texted his mistresses. One account showed thousands of phone calls to Badreddine’s sister, another to his wife and children, including when they visited Saudi Arabia. Another was used to call the Hariri hit squad in the hours before the assassination.

Afterwards, all his phones went silent for two hours. The sword, apparently, was resting from its labours.