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Hariri witness hides in Europe
10/04/2008 14:47 - (SA)
Kuwait City - A key Syrian witness in the probe into former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri's murder has gone into hiding in Europe, a Kuwaiti newspaper quoted him as saying on Thursday.
"I am living in a secret hideout, close to France and the international tribunal, and I am well," Mohammed Zuheir al-Saddiq told Al-Seyassah by telephone, after he left his Paris home and disappeared.
Saddiq said he went into hiding to protect his life, adding that he sent several letters to the international tribunal and the Lebanese judiciary informing them that he had faced three assassination attempts.
He said he decided to go into hiding after the international tribune failed to provide him with adequate protection, but that he would go to the tribunal as soon as it opened.
Saddiq, a former Syrian intelligence official, was detained in October 2005 in a Paris suburb in connection with the February 2005 assassination of Hariri.
Extradited to Lebanon
France refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it had not been given guarantees that he would not face the death penalty if convicted.
Newspaper reports in 2006 quoted Saddiq as saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his then Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud ordered Hariri's killing in a massive Beirut car bombing.
Saddiq reiterated charges that four former senior Lebanese intelligence officers detained in Beirut and their "Syrian partners" were responsible for the assassination of Hariri.
"I insist that the four Lebanese officers and their Syrian partners have killed Hariri and I have the evidence for that and it will be submitted to the tribunal," he said.
"The assassins want the finger of blame to be pointed at Syria, on the basis that it was the only party to benefit from his disappearance," said Saddiq's brother, Imad al-Saddiq.
France's involvement
Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah also accused France of involvement in Saddiq's disappearance.
"Is France in possession of information capable of swaying the investigation and hiding it?" Hezbollah's Hassan Fadlallah said in a statement sent to AFP. He said the affair raised "many questions about France".
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday that the witness had disappeared from his suburban home in Paris. "But I do not know under what conditions and if there was a police presence to watch him," he said.
A political crisis that has rattled the country since the Hariri murder is widely seen as an extension of the regional confrontation pitting the US and its Saudi ally against Iran and Syria.
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