Alwaght- A Lebanese member of parliament has accused the United States and the Israeli regime of being behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
“The United States and Israel stand behind the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. This assassination led to Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and not Resolution 1559,” MP Jamil al-Sayyed said during a hearing session at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague.
In the wake of the session and as he left the court, Sayyed said “the International Tribunal had hidden, during the prosecution, the evidence of ‘false witnesses’ (…) and the judiciary in Lebanon had no authority. Some have contributed to the concealment of evidence, and I cannot answer questions asked at the Office of Prosecution that hid the evidence and participated in the protection of the false witnesses.”
“An argument took place inside the court and I had to leave,” he explained, noting that he has sent a formal letter to Lebanese Attorney General, Saeed Mirza, containing all these flaws, mistakes and fabrications.
“I come to court regardless of the people who are in charge of it. They are mere employees who get paid and have salaries. The court is sheer political, in the end,” he said, giving the example that “In Iraq, George W. Bush and Tony Blair killed 1.5 million Iraqis under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and displaced 10 million others. Do they not deserve to be tried?”
Blaming the US and Israel for Hariri’s assassination, MP Sayyed said that Hariri, through the elections and the extension of the President of the Republic’s term, was giving legitimacy to the Syrian presence and [to President Emile] Lahoud and the resistance. All of this could have been enough reason for Israel to assassinate him. (…) They also tried to assassinate Marwan Hamadeh and provoke Walid Jumblatt, and so it happened.”
“I came to court to defend two things: the right of the Lebanese in truth, and my right, personally,” he added, stressing the need for compelling evidence.
Jamil Sayyed, who won a seat in Parliament in Lebanon's May 6 election, is also the former director of Lebanon's General Security and was called to the stand in the Netherlands as a witness for Hassan Oneissi, one of the four defendants on trial.
In 2009 the United Nations-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) opened its inquiry into the assassination former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was killed in an explosion on February 14, 2005 in central Beirut that also left 21 other people killed.
Charges against Mustafa Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah commander, were dropped after he was killed in Syria in May 2016. The four others, namely Hussein Oneissi, Salim Ayyash, Assad Sabra and Hassan Merhi, are at large and being tried in absentia.
Hezbollah has recurrently denied any involvement in Hariri’s alleged assassination. The group has accused the STL of being influenced by Arab regimes in West Asia and in the West which are basically opposed to the resistance in Lebanon.
