Judge at UN-backed tribunal on Hariri killing to rule on Lebanese generals’ detention

Hariri court judge to rule on generals’ detention

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands — A judge at the U.N.-backed tribunal set up to prosecute former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassins will make a ruling Wednesday on whether to keep the only suspects in the suicide bombing in custody.

Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have been jailed since Aug. 30, 2005, on suspicion of involvement in the blast six months earlier on a Beirut seaside street that killed Hariri and 22 others.

However, the four have never been formally charged. Earlier this month, Belgian pretrial judge Daniel Fransen at the Special Court for Lebanon ordered prosecutors to justify their continued detention.

The four being held are former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed; Maj. Gen. Ali Hajj, the ex-Internal Security Forces director general; Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar, the former military intelligence chief; and the then Presidential Guards commander Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan.

If the judge rules they can still be held, they likely will be transferred soon to the court’s special detention block in The Hague that also houses war crimes suspects from Africa and the Balkans, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

Issuing his order April 15, Fransen said the generals had “a fundamental right” for a judge to rule on their detention. But he also acknowledged the complexity of the case, saying it “raised difficult issues of terrorism.”

The tribunal opened March 1 amid tight security at the former headquarters of a Dutch intelligence agency in Leidschendam, a village on the outskirts of The Hague.

It is made up of Lebanese and international judges and has a Canadian prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, who has yet to issue any indictments.

The court uses Lebanese law, but cannot impose the death penalty.

As prime minister, Hariri, a billionaire businessman, was credited with rebuilding downtown Beirut after the 1975-90 civil war, and with trying to limit Syria’s influence.

U.N.-appointed investigators have been probing his assassination for years. The first chief investigator, Germany’s Detlev Mehlis, said the plot’s complexity suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services had a role. Syria has denied involvement, but was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after Hariri’s assassination, ending a 29-year presence.