March 1,2009 - The Guardian - Hariri tribunal to seek handover of Lebanese generals

Lebanon is to be asked to hand over four senior generals to the special UN tribunal set up try the killers of the former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri as proceedings get under way in the coming months.

The tribunal, which formally opened in The Hague today, is expected to spend three to five years trying a case that has potentially explosive political implications for the Middle East.

Hariri, a billionaire businessman, was assassinated in February 2005 in a suicide truck bombing in Beirut that also killed 22 other people. His death has been widely blamed on Syria, despite strenuous denials from Damascus.

Daniel Bellemare, the court's Canadian prosecutor, told al-Arabiya TV that he would make the handover request for the Lebanese generals within 60 days. The four, in charge of the country's police, intelligence service and an elite army unit at the time of the assassination, are the only people in custody.

"I have no reason to believe that the Lebanese authorities will not respond in a timely fashion to the request," Bellemare said.

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, told the Guardian in a recent interview that he was not concerned by the start of the case, pointing out that he had co-operated fully with the investigation. But with the US president, Barack Obama, signalling his intention to end Syria's isolation as part of a new US Middle East strategy, developments in the case will be closely watched.

There is already nervousness in Lebanon that the Hague proceedings may trigger violence intended to prevent co-operation with it. Hezbollah, Syria's powerful Lebanese ally, opposes the transfer of the four officers to the tribunal.

The four are Major General Jamil Sayyed, former chief of general security; Major General Ali Hajj, former head of the internal security forces; Brigadier General Raymond Azar, former chief of military intelligence; and Brigadier General Mustafa Hamdan, former commander of the presidential guard.

The recent murder of an Lebanese airline pilot who delivered court documents from Beirut to The Hague is the subject of much speculation. Several Syrians with possible links to the assassination have been killed or apparently took their own lives.

The US, Britain and France, which supported the establishment of the tribunal, reiterated their commitment to it on the anniversary of the Hariri assassination last month, suggesting they will not permit to be used as a political tool.

"Now that the tribunal has taken on a life of its own there can be no deal," said Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanon expert at London's Chatham House. "It's not down to the US, or France or Britain any more. It's a UN process.

"But things can be delayed. Say if the tribunal indicts Syrians and they refuse to come, then the tribunal would have to go back to the security council to pass a new resolution that obliges Syria to comply. That could be vetoed, or delayed and certainly take a very long time."

The Hariri killing triggered mass protests, known as the Cedar revolution, that were backed by US and French pressure and led to the withdrawal of Syria's forces from Lebanon after nearly 30 years.

The first UN report on the case found "probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate Hariri could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials, and could not have been ... organised without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services". The names of two close Assad aides were mentioned in a draft document.

The court was set up by the UN security council in 2007 and comprises foreign and Lebanese judges. The names of Lebanese have been withheld out of fear for their safety.

If states refuse to hand over suspects the tribunal could hold trials in absentia, but only as a last resort.

Experts say it is likely that at some point the tribunal will face a "Lockerbie scenario", mirroring the situation when two Libyan agents were indicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103. Colonel Muammar Gadafy refused to surrender them for trial and only did so after years of UN sanctions and a discreet deal spelling out that the trial was of two individuals, not the regime they worked for.

Any suspects who are transferred to The Hague will be kept at the Scheveningen detention centre, which also houses suspects of the international criminal court and the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.