ISF Officer Testifies at STL over Crater Car Parts, Links to Jamaa Jamaa

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon heard on Wednesday the testimony of an Internal Security Forces officer, who claimed that several metal pieces recovered from the crater caused by the massive bombing on Feb. 14, 2005, belonged to a vehicle from the motorcade of ex-PM Rafik Hariri and the Mitsubishi van that the suicide bomber used.

The prosecution's witness, who went by a code number and whose identity remained protected, appeared via video link from Beirut.

The Defense focused its cross-examination of the witness to his ties with late Syrian intelligence officer Jamaa Jamaa.

The witness confirmed that he attended a meeting at the military court in Beirut the day Hariri was assassinated and that several explosives experts showed the conferees two pieces of metal that they had found in the crater caused by the massive blast.

The witness said several days later he and other experts were handed several more metal parts that the army's engineering unit had found at the blast scene.

He told the court, in response to Prosecution questions, that some of the pieces belonged to a Mercedes from Hariri's motorcade, from a Volkswagen, and others belonged to the Mitsubishi as confirmed by the engineers at the van company's agent in Beirut.

He also said that at a later stage divers retrieved some parts from the seabed.

The witness said every time new items emerged, the ISF took them to the Mitsubishi agent for confirmation they belonged to the van.

The found items were mentioned on a map with a code M referring to the Mitsubishi.

Another map had mentioned the parts belonging to the Mitsubishi and body parts of persons present at the site where the explosion went off.

The Prosecution later presented as exhibits numerous pieces of the Mitsubishi van allegedly used in the Hariri bombing.

The protected witness was then cross-examined by Counsel for suspect Hussein Hassan Oneissi, Philippe Larochelle, who asked him about how he knew Jamaa.

Larochelle revealed that Jamaa had contacted the witness on February 15, 2005 and that the witness was himself the one telephoning the Syrian official.

The witness, who seemed nervous during the Defense's cross-examination, described Jamaa as an acquaintance and asserted that he was not someone whom he was in constant contact with.

Larochelle noted however that telephone records showed that the two officials were in fact in constant contact throughout March 2005, adding that the witness had first telephoned Jamaa on January 7 of that same year.

The protected witness said that he no longer remembers the details of that time, adding however that he was introduced to Jamaa by members of his ISF bureau.

He revealed that the Syrian official was seeking information from him over the Hariri bombing and the developments related to it.

Jamaa was one of Syria's top security officers in Lebanon during Damascus's military deployment in the country between 1976 and 2005.

He was killed in October 2013 “while carrying out his national duties to defend Syria and its people and pursuing terrorists in Deir Ezzor," Syrian state television said.

State media gave no immediate details on where in the province Jamaa was killed or how, but jihadist forums said he died during clashes with jihadist fighters in the city of Deir Ezzor.

Counsel for suspect Mustafa Amine Badreddine, lain Edwards, then began cross-examining the protected witness, but his questioning was postponed to Thursday due to time constraints.

The cross-examination of the witness will continue at 11 am Beirut time on Thursday.

Four Hizbullah suspects - Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Oneissi, and Assad Sabra, were indicted in 2011 with plotting the attack, but have not been arrested. A fifth, Hassan Habib Merhi, was charged late last year in the case and is also still at large.