October 6, 2009 - Daily Star - UAE jails Syrian spy in Hariri probe

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

ABU DHABI: A Syrian former spy who was a prosecution witness in the inquiry into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was on Monday given six months in jail and deportation for entering the UAE on a forged Czech passport.
The Supreme State Security Court in Abu Dhabi pronounced its verdict, which cannot be appealed, ordering that the counterfeit passport of Mohammad Zuhair Siddiq, a former member of Syria’s intelligence services, be confiscated.
“The penalty ends in mid-October,” defense lawyer Fahd al-Sabhan told reporters after the verdict, referring to the time his client has already spent in custody.
“We have previously annulled the request that he be handed in to the Syrian authorities. But he could be deported or not deported depending on the sovereign executive decision.”
It was not clear to which country Siddiq could be deported. During the hearing, he asked the court how he could be deported when he has a court order that bans his being handed over to Damascus.
Syria had requested the return of its citizen, who was apprehended in April in the emirate of Sharjah and later transferred to Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital where the federal state security court is located.
Wearing a navy blue and white suit, Siddiq looked different from pictures of him that have appeared in the Lebanese press. He was partly bald with grey hair and had a beard.
He also seemed nervous but said in court after the verdict that he respected the decision.
He said he had been given the forged passport by French intelligence and that he would sue the “people who are responsible.”
During the proceedings the judge referred just once to Siddiq’s alleged role in the Hariri case. “We have charged you with entering on a forged passport and this has nothing to do with your being a ‘King Witness’ or any other,” he said.
In initial reports of the United Nations inquiry commission into the February 2005 killing of Hariri in a huge seafront bomb blast in Beirut, Siddiq was described as a key witness.
He claimed that Lebanon’s former pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud and Syrian President Bashar Assad gave the order to kill the wealthy businessman who opposed the grip exercised by Damascus over its tiny neighbor.
However, Siddiq later recanted, and Lebanese and Syrian judicial authorities accused him of lying. The UAE judge confirmed that the verdict was issued after state security denied any knowledge of Siddiq’s entry into the country or being complicit in it, which his lawyer had previously claimed.
In May, the prosecutor at the international tribunal charged with bringing Hariri’s killers to justice said Siddiq was no longer a credible witness and was of no interest to the inquiry.
Siddiq was arrested in France in 2005 under an international warrant as part of the investigation into the Hariri killing.
The French judicial authorities refused to hand him over to Lebanon because of the “absence of a guarantee that he would not be subject to the death penalty.”