according to a new SPIEGEL article.
"Central passages of the report are based on statements of two witnesses. A former member of the Syrian intelligence services
of dubious reputation told the investigators about several meetings in Damascus, some of them in the president palace, in which the complot was to have been forged. In the meetings Assads brother Maher, which lead the Syrian president guard, as well as Assads brother-in-law Assef Shawkat are to have participated, the director of the military secret service. Until today
Mehlis is not sure how much of this story is correct."
(Babelfish/my translation)
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,381154-2,00.htmlThis could be the reason why Mehlis edited out the names of Maher and Shawkat at the last minute.
The reporter who wrote the article seems to have met with Sadiq's brother in Beirut. The brother is convinced that Sadiq never had any contact to the Syrian intelligence services.
In August he received a call from his brother who was calling from Paris. He seemed very happy and told him: "Imad, I am now a millionaire. I will become a famous man."
Mehlis knows, according to the article, that his case would not hold up in court. He blames the CIA, the French DGSG, Mossad and other intelligence services who didn't relay any useable information to the Commission.
I hope that SPIEGEL decides to translate the whole article and make it available at their English site:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/For the record, all these central passages of the Mehlis report are now in doubt:
96. One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked
for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks
after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, senior Lebanese and Syrian
officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri. He claimed that a senior Lebanese security
official went several times to Syria to plan the crime, meeting once at the Meridian Hotel
in Damascus and several times at the Presidential Place and the office of a senior Syrian
security official. The last meeting was held in the house of the same senior Syrian
security official approximately seven to 10 days before the assassination and included
another senior Lebanese security official. The witness had close contact with high ranked
Syrian officers posted in Lebanon.
97. At the beginning of January 2005, one of the high ranked officers told the witness
that Rafik Hariri was a big problem to Syria. Approximately a month later the officer told
the witness that there soon would be an “earthquake” that would re-write the history of
Lebanon.
(ORIGINAL VERSION: 96. One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, Maher Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil Al Sayyed decided to assassinate Rafiq Al Hariri. He claimed that Sayyed went several times to Syria to plan the crime, meeting once at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus and several times at the Presidential Place and the office of Shawkat.
97. The last meeting was held in the house of Shawkat approximately 7 to 10 days before the assassination and included Mustapha Hamdan. The witness had close contact with high ranked Syrian officers posted in Lebanon.)
98. The witness visited several Syrian military bases in Lebanon. At one such base, in
Hammana, he observed a white Mitsubishi van, with a white tarpaulin over the flatbed.
The observations were made on 11, 12 and 13 February 2005. The Mitsubishi left the
Military base in Hammana on the morning of 14 February 2005. The Mitsubishi Canter
van, which was used as the bomb carrier, entered Lebanon from Syria through the Bekaa
border and a military hot lane on 21 January 2005, at 1320 hrs. It was driven by a Syrian
Colonel from the Army Tenth Division.
99. On 13 February 2005, the witness drove one of the Syrian officers to the St.
George area in Beirut on a reconnaissance exercise, as he subsequently understood it to
have been after the assassination took place.
100. Regarding Mr. Abu Adass, the witness has stated that he played no role in the
crime except as a decoy. He was detained in Syria and forced at gunpoint to record the
video tape. Subsequently, he was killed in Syria. The videotape was sent to Beirut on the
morning of 14 February 2005, and handed over to Jamil Al Sayyed. A civilian with a
criminal record and an officer from the Sûreté Générale were tasked with putting the tape
somewhere in Hamra and then calling Ghassan Ben Jeddo, an Al-Jazeera TV reporter.
101. General Jamil Al-Sayyed, according to the witness, cooperated closely with
General Mustapha Hamdan and General Raymond Azar in the preparation of the
assassination of Mr. Hariri. He also coordinated with General Ghazali (and, among others, people from Mr. Ahmad Jibreel in Lebanon). General Hamdan and General Azar
provided logistical support, providing money, telephones, cars, walkie-talkies, pagers,
weapons, ID-cards etc. Those who knew of the crime in advance were among others,
Nasser Kandil and General Ali Al-Hajj.
102. Fifteen minutes before the assassination, the witness was in the vicinity of the St.
George area. He received a telephone call from one of the senior Syrian officers, who
asked the witness where he was. When he answered, he got the advice to leave the area
immediately.
(...)
104. Another “witness” who later became a suspect, Zuhir Ibn Mohamed Said Saddik,
has given detailed information to the Commission about the crime, in particular insofar as
the planning phase is concerned. Paragraphs 105 to 110 set out the main points of Mr.
Saddik’s statement.
105. One of the main issues raised in Mr. Saddik’s statement was a report that he said
was drafted by Nasser Kandil. This report stated that Mr. Hariri and Marwan Hamadeh
had a meeting in Sardinia. At the end of the report Kandil stated that a decision should be
taken to eliminate Mr. Hariri. Nasser Kandil was tasked to plan and implement a
campaign aiming at ruining Mr. Hariri’s reputation on religious and media level. The
Baath Party in Lebanon decided that they should get rid of Mr. Hariri by any possible
means and isolate him since President Lahoud’s attempt to remove him from the political
scene failed.
106. Mr. Saddik stated that the decision to assassinate Mr. Hariri had been taken in
Syria, followed by clandestine meetings in Lebanon between senior Lebanese and Syrian
officers, who had been designated to plan and pave the way for the execution of the
assault. These meetings started in July 2004 and lasted until December 2004. The seven
senior Syrian officials and four senior Lebanese officials were alleged to have been
involved in the plot.
107. Planning meetings started in Mr. Saddik’s apartment in Khaldeh and were
subsequently moved to an apartment in Al-Dahiyye, a district of Beirut. Some of these
individuals visited the area around the St. George Hotel under different guises and at
different times for planning and preparation purposes of the assassination.
108. Mr. Saddik also gave information about the Mitsubishi itself and that the driver
eventually assigned had been an Iraqi individual who had been led to believe that the target was Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (who happened to be in Beirut prior to the
assassination).
109. Mr. Saddik had been informed that TNT and some special explosives had been
used in order to direct suspicions towards extremist Islamic groups, as these kinds of
explosive had only been used in operations in Iraq.
110. A trip by Mr. Saddik with Abdel-Kareem Abbas led to a camp in Zabadane. Al-
Saddik claimed to have seen the Mitsubishi Canter van in this camp: mechanics were
working on it and emptying the sides. The sides of the car’s flatbed, as well as the doors
of the Mitsubishi had been widened and filled with explosives, which had also been put
underneath the driver’s seat. In the camp he had seen a young man whom he had been
able to identify as Mr. Abu Adass after seeing the video on TV on 14 February 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/21_10_05_mehlisreport.pdf (PDF)
(This is a public UN report, I don't think that copyright rules apply.)
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