Russia reiterates support for international tribunalPukin insists court 'shouldn't be politicized"

Daily Star - Russia reiterates support for international tribunalPukin insists court 'shouldn't be politicized", 12 April 2008

Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Sergei Boukine reiterated on Friday Moscow's support for the international tribunal that would try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and related crimes. Pukin told reporters the ongoing investigation into the 2005 assassination of Hariri "should be accomplished and the culprits, be they individuals or sides, should be punished."
"We adhere to this stand and we would support the tribunal that shouldn't be politicized. We, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, follow up closely the ongoing investigation into the crime," he added.
The ambassador also stressed that his country rejected "political assassinations."
Pukin made the remarks to reporters during a visit to Progressive Socialist party leader Walid jumblatt at the latter's ancestral palace in the Chouf town of Mukhtara.
Last week, Russia pledged to contribute $ 500, 000 to the international tribunal.
In other developments, German Prosecutor and former head of the International probe committee into the Hariri assassination Detlev Mehlis described as "nonsense" allegations made by detained former head of the General Security Jamil al-Sayyed in a letter sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Mehlis' remarks were published by the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat on Friday.
In his letter to Ban, Sayyed said that Mehlis had asked him to tell the Syrian government to find a Syrian to confess to the killing of Hariri.
Sayyed said that three months prior to his arrest an investigator from the UN commission had asked him to transmit a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad "which was meant to persuade him to present to the commission a Syrian victim of a certain caliber, who would confess to the crime and would eventually be found dead." This would allow for an agreement with Syria similar to the one reached with Libya in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, he said.
A Libyan intelligence agent and a Libyan airline official were tried for the bombing and the intelligence agent was convicted, though a Scottish judicial commission said last June that new evidence indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
Sayyed said he told the UN investigator that he could not transmit such a message unless he was provided evidence "pointing in the direction of a Syrian involvement in the crime, otherwise the Syrians would think that he was leading them into a trap."
The general said the investigator replied that the UN commission did not have such evidence and insisted that if Sayyed did not transmit the message for a Syrian to admit to the crime he himself would be blamed for the assassination.
On Thursday, key Syrian witness in the probe into former Hariri's assassination said he was in hiding in Europe as his family demanded answers from France about his fate.
Mohammed Zuheir al-Siddiq's whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery since he disappeared about a month ago from his suburban Paris home, and relatives in Syria say that they have been without news for two months.
"I am living in a secret hideout, close to France and the international tribunal, and I am well," told Kuwait's As-Siyassah newspaper quoted Siddiq as saying by telephone.