Report: Syria Hasn’t Sent Arrest Warrants Against 33 Figures in Hariri Probe
Informed sources have denied that Syria has sent to Lebanon for the second time arrest warrants against 33 Lebanese personalities in the lawsuit filed by former head of Lebanon’s General Security Department Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed.
The sources told al-Mustaqbal daily published Tuesday that Syria only sent a detailed document on the identities of the 33 figures. They include judges, security officers, politicians, journalists and other Lebanese, Arab and foreign officials and individuals.
“Interpol does not accept such correspondence because it contradicts with its by-laws,” they said, denying that Lebanese Interpol received the warrants.
Syria issued the arrest warrants last year after Sayyed filed a lawsuit against the 33 people for making false accusations against him in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination case.
Sayyed in his complaint alleged the U.N. probe into Hariri’s murder was based on fabricated testimony aimed at implicating Syria and its supporters in Lebanon in the former premier’s killing.
He was one of four security generals who served four years in prison on suspicion of involvement in the murder. All four were released in 2009 for lack of evidence.
Among those named in the warrants is Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor who led the early stages of the U.N. investigation into Hariri's assassination.
The Lebanese defendants include the head of the Internal Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, MP Marwan Hamadeh, General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza and former Justice Minister Charles Rizk.
Syria's former vice president, Abdel Halim Khaddam, who has joined the opposition and is now living in exile in France, is also a defendant.
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