UN Report’s Star witness al-Sadiq a convicted embezzler - Der Spiegel

 According to Hamburg’s “ Der Spiegel” of 22 October ,the alleged intelligence agent al-Sadik, 42, on whose testimony a considerable portion of Mehlis investigation is based, has been convicted of , embezzlement and fraud, among other crimes. Even within the UN Commission investigating the Hariri murder, there is doubt on the credibility of the Syrian witness. According to a statement by his brother, Sadik had called him from Paris in late summer and said, “I’ve become a millionaire!” (For giving false testimony!) Mehlis was contacted through the Syrian dissident Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of President Bashir al-Assad, who opposes his nephew in Damascus.

Hariri murder UN investigator Detlev Mehlis has doubtful integrity

Executive Director of the London based Institute for Policy Research & Development and Sussex University Prof NM Ahmed has cast doubts on the integrity of "Detlev Mehlis’ , who as Berlin public prosecutor, “ inadvertently but consistently covered up the dubious involvement of US, Israeli and German intelligence interests in the 1986 terrorist attack; actively built a selective politically-motivated case against suspects without objective material proof; while ignoring and protecting a group of suspects with documented connections to western secret services.”  This fundamentally tarnishes the credibility of his investigation.

Mehlis prosecuted numerous terrorism and organized crime cases including the 1982 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin, promptly blamed by the Reagan administration on Libya to justify the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, killing at least 30 Libyan civilians including children.

US National Security Agency intercepted coded exchanges between Tripoli and the East Berlin Libyan Peoples Bureau saying “We have something that will make you happy”, and another after the bombing: “An event occurred. You will be pleased with the result.” But in his sworn testimony for the Lockable trial, former Israeli intelligence colonel Victor Ostrovsky admitted that Israeli Mossad’s commandos had set up the transmitter in Tripoli to send false telex signals about the “success” of the Berlin bomb. (In 1990, US had produced for the Saudi rulers, concocted aerial photographs of Iraqi forces in an attack mode against the Kingdom to persuade them to accept US forces. These are standard Anglo-Saxon and Mossad tricks)

An investigation by German public television’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) broadcast on 25th August 1998 reported that several leading suspects in the Berlin disco bombing were being protected from prosecution by western intelligence services. According to Russian and East German intelligence services, the group worked for western intelligence. Full details on Detlev Mehlis capers are given in Mediainternational.net website of 30 October 2005.

There is thus doubt that Mehlis’s investigations might conceal the role of US and Israeli intelligence interests in relation to the Hariri assassination.

The Report;

The international investigation was never mandated to make clear-cut accusations. As Mehlis clearly states in the final paragraph of the 54 page-long reports -- a summary of over 16,000 pages of documents the team collected during the course of its work -- only further investigations and a fair trial can prove the guilt or innocence of any given party. Mehlis also stated that the”investigation is not complete," and the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, subsequently extended the inquiry until Dec. 15. However, the prosecutor had enough confidence in the information he had garnered to add that there is "converging evidence pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist act." The investigators further underlined that the Hariri assassination was prepared over several months, and was "carried out by a group with an extensive organization and considerable resources and capabilities."

Mehlis concluded that Hariri's assassination was so complex that it would be difficult to imagine that the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services did not know about it. The assassination decision "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security official and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services.”. Clearly, it is not a report with judicial rectitude.

Condi goes off the handle again,

Change of unfriendly regimes in the Middle East is one constant theme of US policy .In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 19th October, Condeleeza Rice confirmed that the administration’s strategy after 9/11 had always been to redesign the Middle East. Iraq was merely the first step in that broader strategy. As for regime change in Damascus, reportedly a US official even asked the Italian Senate President to suggest a replacement for Bashar Assad. 

US President George W Bush told the pan-Arab Al-Arabia TV channels that force would be used against Syria only as "the last -- the very last -- option". As also against Iran! Nevertheless, all options are on the table.

As usual Condi Rice went off the handle after the report "There must be some way to assure accountability," said Ms Rice, adding that the international community would have "no real credibility" if it failed to take punitive action. Her unabashed rhetoric, tone and use of language, compared to Gen Colin Powell’s, have exposed the hollowness of her so-called scholarship.

Why not the international criminal court for investigation [which the US opposes]."Everyone knows the United States' view of the international criminal court," said Ms Rice. "That view is not going to change."

Wrote academic and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts.”Grasping a UN report that uses unreliable witnesses to implicate Syria in the assassination of a former Lebanese government official, Condi Rice told the BBC on October 23 that Syria's crime cannot be "left lying on the table. This really has to be dealt with."

”This is amazing for many reasons. Here is the person in charge of US diplomacy acting as if she is the secretary of war unsheathing military force. Whoever heard of an American diplomat wanting to start a war because a former Middle Eastern government official was assassinated?

”The UN investigator, Detlev Mehlis, has no more idea who assassinated the former official than the US knows who is responsible for assassinating the many Iraqi officials under its protection. After more than two and one-half years of war in Iraq, the US still does not know exactly who the enemy is that it is fighting. Yet Mehlis blames Syria for an assassination on the strength of an informer described by the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, as a convicted felon and swindler.

On the basis of the word of a convicted felon and swindler, Condi Rice wants a high level UN Security Council meeting to condemn Syria so the Bush administration can bring about "regime change" in Syria.”

The accusations are based on convergences, guess and innuendo.” I think the report is far from professional and will not lead us to the truth," Syria's information minister, Mahdi Dakhlallah, told al-Jazeera television. Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha, said the accusations "will only help fuel anti-American sentiment around the world".

Syria –Lebanon linkages and US- Israeli moves;

The Syrian-Lebanese relations are very complex as historically Lebanon was part of greater Syria as was Palestine including Israel and Jordan.

For decades, Lebanon has been the center for regional and international power play, involving many Arab countries, Israel and the United States. These powers manipulated and even created the countries' political alliances, supplied funds and weapons, helped some players and marginalized others.

If Syria has naturally its own alliances, Israel also maintains proxies, as does USA with its right wing Lebanese Christians, as also France. Iran has its militias, and even Iraq, during the Ba'ath party reign, had its own supporters. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was also a significant power broker throughout the 1970s, until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians were killed. Since then, Palestinians have been confined to their refugee camps in the wake of the expulsion of PLO forces.

With so many competing forces in Lebanon, whether internally or externally, who keep their proxies and meddle in the country's affairs, to criticize Syria alone for Lebanon's misfortunes, past and present, and to solely single out Damascus as the only likely suspect in Hariri's murder on the evidence of a convicted embezzler by the German investigator is just western trickery .” It is ironic that those who have for long contributed to Lebanon's demise are now the main players in leading the faultfinding chorus, demanding justice and the "truth".

What ever may be Syria's record in Lebanon, Damascus was not alone responsible for increasing troubles in Lebanon.” It certainly had more to do with sheltering and benefiting Syria itself, an objective that often led to abuses of power, unwarranted interference in Lebanon's political affairs and ultimately to near complete hegemony over the country's sovereignty.” However, Syria was invited to keep peace in Lebanon by US, UN and the Arab states at the time of the Civil war.