The English-language daily’s report, which cited leaked diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Beirut, is likely to fuel perceptions in Lebanon that the international investigation into Hariri’s 2005 assassination was flawed and politicized.
The leaked documents could not be found on WikiLeaks sites and the Daily Star said it obtained them exclusively.
The newspaper also revealed that the investigators were frustrated by “insane” internal UN bureaucracy and a lack of cooperation even from countries publicly supporting the investigation. The UN sleuths were also eager to obtain US satellite imagery.
At the time of the assassination, Maj. Gen. Jamil Al-Sayyed, Brig. Gen. Mustapha Hamdan, Maj. Gen. Ali Haj and Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar were seen as pillars of a Lebanese state that was dominated by neighboring Syria.
They were arrested in August 2005 at the request of German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who headed the early stages of a UN investigation into the killing and suggested that prominent Syrian and Lebanese figures were behind it.
Less than a year later Mehlis’s successor, Serge Brammertz, said there was no legal basis for their continued detention and suggested that political reasons were preventing their release.
“Brammertz explained that, if any sort of international legal standards were applied, the four generals would be released immediately,” the paper reported one cable as saying.
“At the same time, however he acknowledged that doing so would be a political disaster for Lebanon.”
The generals were eventually released in April 2009 after being held for nearly four years without charge.
Another cable cited by the Daily Star highlighted diplomats’ concerns that the generals might seek revenge when freed.
“Besides having a seismic effect on the political situation here, Sayyed’s release might well have security implications for us as a diplomatic mission,” it said.
“If Sayyed gets out, he is going to be angry and seeking payback, and he is going to see the United States as at least party responsible for his interrogation by (UN investigators) and his long months in detention.”
Since the generals were arrested five years ago, media reports have suggested the investigators’ focus may have shifted from Syria to the Hezbollah group.
Hezbollah members are expected to be named in draft indictments later this month but the group, which has denied any role in the killing, says the tribunal is a deeply politicized project serving the agenda of Hezbollah’s enemy, Israel.
A message sent in May 2006 said that the acting chief of investigations Peter Nicholson had sought US surveillance imagery of Beirut and areas near the border with Syria.
“(Nicholson) realized the difficulty of these requests, given the classification levels of satellite imagery, but he would be happy with anything the (US) could provide,” it said.
Other cables showed Brammertz’s frustration at the lack of cooperation from European countries including France, which strongly supports the tribunal in public.
Paris had been “flatly non-cooperative” and had raised obstacles to interviewing a suspect on French territory, the Daily Star said. “I’ve had better cooperation from Syria than some of the EU countries,” it quoted Brammertz as saying.
Brammertz also complained that internal bureaucracy took up 50 to 70 percent of his time, blaming cumbersome procedures affecting everything from hiring staff to food supply.
