Mehlis accuses Brammertz of dithering

Daily Star - Mehlis accuses Brammertz of dithering, 29 january 2008

Former UN chief Investigator Detlev Mehlis has criticized his successor, Serge Brammertz, and warned that the vitality of the probe into former Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination may be fading away. "I haven't seen a word in his reports during the past two years confirming that he has moved forward," Mehlis told New York-based Wall Street Journal over the weekend. "A new commissioner has been installed. So it's a good time for a very last summing-up on my part," Mehlis said. He was referring to the appointment of former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare to head the Hariri probe after the Security Council approved Brammertz's nomination to head the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, starting January 1. Mehlis, who was the first UN chief investigator, has said in his reports that the Hariri plot's complexity suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services had a role, but Brammertz has not echoed his view. Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have been under arrest for almost two years for alleged involvement in the killing. In his final appearance before the UN Security Council in December, Brammertz said progress made in the last few months had enabled investigators to identify "a number of persons of interest" who may have been involved in some aspect of the crime - or knew about the preparations. The investigation "appears to have lost the momentum it had until January 2006," Mehlis said in the interview. "When I left we were ready to name suspects," he said, "but it seems not to have progressed from that stage.""If you have suspects you don't allow them to roam free for years to tamper with evidence," he told The Wall Street Journal. The German prosecutor also accused Brammertz of wasting valuable time by reopening analysis of the crime scene because the commission ended up confirming Mehlis' conclusion that Hariri had been killed by an above-ground explosion. "We needed two years of investigative endeavor to discover this?" Mehlis asked. About the Belgian prosecutors' secrecy in conducting the inquiry, Mehlis said: "The Lebanese public has to be informed, even if there are setbacks in the investigation. In a democracy people have the right to know, particularly when a prime minister was murdered and people don't trust the authorities." Mehlis also predicted that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon would be set up this summer, but "people should not expect a trial within the next two to three years, unless the investigation regains momentum." He feared that "suspects will end up in a judicial no-man's land, with Lebanon claiming they are under the UN's jurisdiction, and the UN saying that they must remain under Lebanese jurisdiction." "No one can abolish this tribunal. I may not be happy about the time frame, but am deeply convinced the case can be solved and will be solved," he said.