BEIRUT, 3 December 2005 — The German magistrate heading the UN probe into the murder of Lebanon’s ex-Premier Rafik Hariri said he intends to step down when his mandate ends on Jan. 1, as the inquiry enters a critical phase. Speaking in an interview with the French-language L’Orient Le Jour newspaper published yesterday, Detlev Mehlis said he had to return to other duties in Germany but rejected speculation that he would quit beforehand.
His announcement comes at a crucial moment for his inquiry, which is expected to begin interrogating next week in Vienna five top Syrian officials implicated in the Feb. 14 bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 others.
“I will not resign. I will not quit the commission of inquiry. I have a contract that stipulates that my mandate will expire on Jan. 1 while (the commission’s) current mandate expires on Dec. 15,” said Mehlis.
“My employer is my country, Germany. I have other tasks that are waiting for me,” he added, in an indication that this date would mark the end of his work as head of the commission that he started in mid-June.
The straight-talking German prosecutor had a prickly relationship with the authorities in Damascus after his initial report linked Syrian officials to the killing and castigated the regime’s lack of cooperation with his probe.
No stranger to controversy, Mehlis found his report slammed by Syria as biased and was also forced to explain to bewildered journalists how a supposedly confidential version ended up in the hands of the media.
“The departure of Mehlis has still not been officially announced. The fact that Mehlis wants to leave after six months is nothing new. He told us this right from the beginning,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told the L’Orient Le Jour. “We are very interested in Mehlis staying associated with the work of the independent commission and Mehlis and the secretary general are staying in contact to this end,” he said. The Lebanese government on Thursday asked the United Nations for a six-month extension of the UN commission of inquiry’s mandate beyond Dec. 15, the deadline for Mehlis to deliver his report on the assassination to the security council. Lebanese Justice Minister Charles Rizk has warned the investigation could “last months, if not years.”
However Mehlis’ spokesman declined to comment when asked about the identity of the magistrate’s successor.
The five Syrian officials are expected to be interrogated in Vienna starting on Dec. 5 until Dec. 7, UN officials said. A source close to the case said that Syria’s military intelligence chief Assef Shawkat, who is President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law, was not among the five to be interrogated.
In Beirut, Lebanese Druze leader and prominent anti-Syrian MP Walid Jumblatt said yesterday that relations with Syria have “reached a point of no return,” citing steadily rising tensions since the February assassination of Hariri.
“Relations have reached a point of no return, because we cannot get along with this regime (Damascus) before knowing the truth about the assassination of Rafik Hariri,” Jumblatt told the Lebanese weekly newspaper Al Shiraa.
“The current (Syrian) regime has closed every door on reconciliation,” said Jumblatt, a one-time ally of Syria. He added that he nevertheless believed that “parties and men capable of offering the country a new horizon” still existed in Syria,
In another development, a former security chief detained in the investigation into former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination returned to prison yesterday after two days in hospital for heart problems, a Lebanese security official said.
Maj. Gen. Raymond Azar, the former chief of Lebanon’s military intelligence who was rushed to hospital Wednesday, underwent a heart catheterization Thursday and was released yesterday morning. He was taken back to the Roumieh prison in the suburbs of Beirut.
