DAMASCUS, 8 November 2005 — A Syrian committee probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced yesterday that it had conducted interviews with a number of witnesses and started analyzing the flood of mails and e-mails it has received on the case. The newly set up Special Judicial Committee, or SJC, also pledged full cooperation with the UN inquiry into the assassination of Hariri and the Lebanese judicial authorities concerned to find out the truth behind the murder.
“The SJC has already interviewed several witnesses who voluntarily showed up at the committee’s premises in Mazza District since we actually began our round-the-clock meetings on Nov. 6. We have also started analyzing the various kinds of data sent to us by witnesses either by post or by e-mail,” Judge Ghada Murad, public prosecutor and head of the SJC, said at a news conference.
Murad said her committee would cooperate fully with the UN inquiry. However, the investigation was based on “the rules of justice and the fact that all suspects are innocent until proven otherwise,” she stressed.
Foreign Minister Farouk Shara earlier said his country would cooperate fully with the UN investigating team even though Damascus has branded the UN report released on the killing last month as “politically motivated.” “Syria is quite keen on cooperating fully with the UN inquiry and creating the necessary and appropriate mechanisms and procedures to achieve this,” Shara was quoted by the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency as saying.
However, neither Shara nor Murad said whether Damascus would comply with a request by the head of the UN investigation team, Detlev Mehlis, earlier this week to interview six Syrian officials in Lebanon, including Maj. Gen. Asef Shawkat, bother-in-law of President Bashar Assad. “The work of the UN inquiry team should be done in a professional way that should seek to find the truth,” Shara told a meeting of the National Progressive Front, the highest political body in Syria.
Lebanese sources quoted members of the Mehlis team as saying that the Syrian government was officially requested that Shawkat and five other officers, who had been interviewed by the international investigators in Damascus earlier, be made available for questioning in Lebanon.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry yesterday confirmed receiving such a request and said Damascus was looking into it.
Aside from Shawkat, Mehlis wants to interview Lt. Gen. Rustom Ghazali, former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon; Maj. Gen. Bahjat Suleiman, former head of the internal security branch at the General Intelligence Department; Lt. Gen. Thafer Youssef; Lt. Gen. Abdul-Karim Abbas; and Jamea Jamea who served in the Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon as a senior aide to Ghazali.
