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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Lebanon refuses to free 4 Generals linked to Hariri murder |
| 2008-08-10 |
| Prosecutor Saqr Saqr refused to free the four men, who have pleaded their innocence and repeatedly asked for their release through their lawyers, a judicial official said. But Saqr agreed to release two of the nine suspects detained following Hariri's murder in a massive Beirut car bomb blast in February 2005, the official added. The pair had been held for giving false information. The generals are former presidential guard chief General Mustafa Hamdan ( top left) , the former head of the general security department General Jamil Sayyed ( top right) , the former head of the internal security forces General Ali Hajj (lower left) and the former chief of army intelligence General Raymond Azar ( lower right) . In April the government defended as "perfectly legal" the holding of the officers after criticism by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, which said their detention without charge was "arbitrary" and "unjust." But the government insisted the men could not be released for fear they would flee with the help of "influential parties" -- a reference to both Syria and the Hezbollah group. Syria has been implicated in Hariri's murder but has denied any involvement. After the murder Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon under international pressure, ending a 29-year deployment. In June the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to extend for another six months the mandate of the U.N. panel probing Hariri's murder. An international tribunal is to try suspects in the Hariri crime and related murders |
| Posted by:Fred |