Lebanese ex-ministers meet with UN investigators

Two Lebanese ex-ministers who survived assassination attempts were given a "troubling" update on Thursday by UN investigators probing their cases, one of the ministers told AFP. Former telecommunication minister Marwan Hamadeh said he and ex-defence minister Elias Murr were summoned by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in the Netherlands, for a briefing. "We were summoned to the prosecutor general's office in Beirut and were told by the STL team that the probe had moved forward and that there will be an announcement shortly concerning our cases," said Hamadeh, an MP who was wounded in a 2004 car bomb explosion. "The information we were given is troubling because it reveals the magnitude of the conspiracy," Hamadeh said, refusing to elaborate. Murr was wounded in a bomb attack in 2005. Lebanese journalist May Chidiac, wounded in an assassination attempt in 2005, was also present at Thursday's meeting. The STL was set up in 2007 two years after the assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in a seaside bombing. The UN-backed court is tasked with identifying those behind Hariri's assassination as well as a string of bombings between 2004 and 2008 that killed or wounded several anti-Syrian politicians or journalists. The court in June issued indictments in the Hariri case against four members of the militant group Hezbollah. The court on Thursday urged the four suspects to surrender to the court.