BEIRUT, 31 August 2005 — UN investigators questioned five senior pro-Syrian figures, including a top aide to Lebanon’s president, yesterday as suspects in the February killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Lebanese police and UN investigators detained three former security chiefs in dawn raids, the first time they have implicated allies of Syria in the killing that shook Lebanon and hastened the departure of Syrian troops after three decades.
Maj. Gen. Jamil Al-Sayyed, former head of General Security, Maj. Gen. Ali Al-Hajj, ex-chief of police, and Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar, former military intelligence chief, were detained at the UN’s request.
A fourth man named as a suspect, Republican Guard commander Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan, went to the headquarters of the United Nations investigating team himself. A close aide to President Emile Lahoud, he was the only pro-Syrian security official to keep his job after parliamentary elections that ended in June ushered in an anti-Syrian majority.
The fifth suspect, former member of Parliament Nasser Qandil, returned from Syria to face the investigators, brought in by the Security Council after a UN fact-finding mission found Lebanon incapable of carrying out a credible inquiry.
“The UN investigators searched the homes of the former security chiefs and the head of the Republican Guard before bringing them in as suspects for questioning...,” the UN said in a statement.
“The detentions in Beirut are the beginning of justice,” Hariri’s son, member of Parliament Saad Hariri, told Arab television news channel Al-Arabiya from Paris. “This is a start... There will be more detentions.”
Lahoud defended Hamdan as a loyal officer who had saved his life during the 1975-1990 civil war and said the five were only being questioned and remained innocent until proven otherwise.
“Everybody is innocent before the law until proven guilty. If evidence showed up that they are guilty then they might be put on trial,” he told a visiting US congressional delegation.
Hariri’s killing, which many in Lebanon blamed on Damascus, sparked mass anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut. Syria denied any involvement but bowed to world pressure and pulled its 14,000 troops out of the country in April after 29 years. Some Lebanese politicians had accused the four officers of a role in the deaths of Hariri and 20 others in a large car bomb blast in Beirut.
The chief UN investigator, Detlev Mehlis, hinted last month that Hamdan, who was first questioned in June, was involved in a cover-up of the killing.
The Lebanese Justice Ministry said in a statement Mehlis had promised to inform the Lebanese magistrate of the results of the UN interrogation and pass on recommendations, but that the fate of the detainees was in the hands of local authorities. The UN team is expected to report its findings to the Security Council in the next few weeks.
