THE brother-in-law of Syria’s president has been implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, according to a UN inquiry.

Syria’s interior minister was found dead in his office, days before the release of a UN report that could implicate high-ranking Syrian officials in the murder of Lebanon’s former prime minister.

Syria’s interior minister, who ran Lebanon as security chief until 2003, committed suicide today, days before the expected release of a UN report into the assassination of a former Lebanese leader.

The Lebanese editor of the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper has been sentenced in absentia to one year in jail for falsely reporting that Lebanon’s president was the target of an attempted assassination, judicial officials said in Beirut.