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Mystery Military Moves in Damascus
Reports made the rounds in the past 24 hours about military movements around the Damascus houses of Syrian officials mentioned by U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis in connection with the assassination of 5-time Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, An Nahar reported on Thursday. "These reports have raised questions on whether these movements were precautionary measures or for other purposes," said the terse report of 44 words on An Nahar's page-one. The report was carried under this headline: "Reports of Movements in Damascus the Nature of Which Could Not Be Determined." The story coincided with leaks that German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis and his team were deliberating at their Monteverde headquarters northeast of Beirut the list of Syrian intelligence chiefs that they want to interrogate next week. The commission reportedly prefers to conduct the interrogations at Monteverde but President Assad's regime has a right to have a say on the interrogation venue but not to object to anyone in Syria the commission demands to question under Security Council Resolution 1636. There is no doubt that the Mehlis commission is bent on interrogating Assad's younger brother Maher, who is the commander of the presidential guard brigade, and brother-in-law Gen. Assef Shawkat, who heads Syria's military intelligence service. Another officer marked for interrogation is Brig. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, who headed Syria's military intelligence apparatus in Lebanon when Hariri was killed Feb. 14. The assets of a Lebanese woman suspected of being Ghazaleh's wife, Lubna Oweidat, have been frozen at instructions from the Mehlis commission along with the accounts of four additional Lebanese army officers, Saad Hariri's Al Mustaqbal newspaper reported on Thursday. Among the officers targeted by the financial crackdown is air force pilot Wassef Serhal, who is in charge of foreign relations at the presidential palace and is reported to have resigned his post and his membership of the presidential guard brigade over the arrest of the brigade's commander Gen. Mustafa Hamdan as a primary suspect in Hariri's assassination, Al Mustaqbal said. The other three officers were identified by Al Mustaqbal as Col. Elias Sassin, commander of the special squads of the presidential guard brigade, Col. Mohammed Mossin, President Lahoud's personal aide de camp and Brig. Gen. Faisal al Rashid, former commander of the regional department of the state security service Posted by: Steve 2005-11-04 |
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