BEIRUT, 19 October 2005 — Lebanon has charged with murder a key Syrian witness detained in France over the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, judicial sources said yesterday. French police detained Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, a witness in a UN inquiry into Hariri’s February killing, on Sunday on an international warrant.
Lebanese judicial sources said they had asked for Siddiq’s detention based on the murder charges because they believed he had an indirect role in Hariri’s killing and had misled international investigators. Siddiq faces the same charges as four pro-Syrian generals detained since August on the recommendation of chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis and charged with murder, attempted murder and carrying out a terrorist act in connection with Hariri’s assassination, they said.
Lebanon has asked that Siddiq be extradited but was awaiting a French decision on the issue, they added. French judicial sources said on Monday Beirut had 30 days to provide the necessary documents for the extradition request. When he presents his report to the United Nations this week, Mehlis is expected to implicate Syrian officials in the assassination that plunged Lebanon into its worst security and political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Lebanon’s public prosecutor has also asked the central bank to lift its traditional banking secrecy to freeze accounts held by the four generals, judicial and banking sources said. The central bank declined to comment, but banking sources in Lebanon said it was certain to comply after opening up their accounts and those of several other Syrian and Lebanese figures to investigators in September.
Among them was Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, who was found dead in his office last week, three weeks after he was questioned by the UN team probing Hariri’s death. “They have asked for the accounts of the generals to be frozen and banking secrecy to be lifted awaiting further scrutiny of movements into and out of these accounts as this might help with the investigation,” one banking source said.
Lebanese political sources say Siddiq was one of the leading witnesses in the probe, having said he attended meetings at which Hariri’s killing was discussed, but became a suspect when it transpired he had misled investigators.
