Travel ban on 6 Syrians

2005-11-10 12:14

Damascus - A Syrian judicial committee probing the assassination of a former Lebanese leader has banned six officials a United Nations commission wants to interview, from travelling, a spokesperson for the newly formed committee said on Wednesday.

The committee has also started quizzing the officials, said Ibrahim Daraji. Daraji did not name the six, but they reportedly include general Assef Shawkat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law and chief of Syria's military intelligence service.

President Bashar Assad's regime has been under heavy pressure since the UN security council demanded last month that Syria co-operate fully with the inquiry into the February 14 assassination of ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, warning of further measures if it fails to do so.

The security council unanimously resolved on October 31 to increase the commission's powers, giving chief investigator Detlev Mehlis the right to question anybody at any location and under conditions of his choice. It was not immediately clear how the travel ban would affect possible attempt by Mehlis to interview the six outside of Syria.

Considering the UN's request

The Syrian government has said it is considering the UN request to interview the officials and has not yet given an answer.

Assad is expected to deliver a "political speech" on Thursday touching on current political issues and the internal situation, and could give Damascus' answer on whether it will let UN investigators question the Syrian officials.

Pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat has identified Shawkat plus five other officials as those wanted for UN questioning.

The others are major general Bahjat Suleiman, former chief of Syria's internal intelligence; brigadier general Rustum Ghazale, who was Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon when Hariri was killed; general Jameh Jameh, Ghazale's assistant in Beirut; general Abdul Karim Abbas, head of Syrian intelligence's Palestinian section; and general Zafer Youssef, head of intelligence's communications and internet section.

The list did not include Assad's younger brother, Maher Assad, who was named along with Shawkat in a copy of Mehlis' interim report to the security council last month.

Probing Hariri's death

Syrian Prosecutor-General Ghada Murad, who heads the Syrian committee, sent a letter to Mehlis inviting him for talks in Damascus on co-ordinating his probe and "search for the best means and mechanisms of co-operating between the two commissions", the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Mehlis' report said Hariri's killing by a massive truck bomb in Beirut could not have been carried out without the complicity of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence. The report also accused Syria of providing only limited co-operation to the commission.

Syria rejects the report's findings.

- AP