Turning to the issue of international cooperation with investigator’s requests, Brammertz alleged that
France – a long-time vocal supporter of the probe into Hariri’s death – had been particularly “flatly non-cooperative.”“After Brammertz asked this country’s ambassador in Lebanon for access to interview a suspect in that country’s territory [
almost certainly a reference to Zuheir Siddiq, the "false witness" who used perjured testimony to implicate Syria -- Alice], the ambassador came back with all kinds of conditions about how the interview would take place, how the testimony could or could not be used, in order to comply with EU standards. Brammertz said, ‘I told him,
if you were Syria, I would write in my report that you refused to cooperate with the investigation. He was shocked, of course, but it’s true. I’ve had better cooperation from Syria than some of the EU countries.’”
In an earlier meeting with Feltman on July 6, 2006 – 16 months after Hariri’s death and over a year after the investigation began – Brammertz is said to have advised that
there was no legal basis for the four generals’ continued detention.
“Brammertz explained that,
if any sort of international legal standards were applied, the four generals would be released immediately. At the same time, however, he acknowledged that doing so would be a
political disaster for Lebanon,” a cable on the meeting read.
Brammertz, who succeeded Detlev Mehlis as UNIIIC commissioner, reportedly labeled three now-discredited witnesses – whose testimonies were used in the four generals’ incarceration – as completely unreliable. He suggested
Mehlis had overstepped his jurisdiction in advising the four be detained.
“Brammertz said that much of his work, though, is focused on completing three ‘legacy projects,’ final appraisals of the testimony provided by Zuhair Mohammad Siddiq, Hussam Hussam, and ‘X,’ a ‘protected witness located in a Nordic country,’” Feltman’s cable said.
“As he prepared his final evaluation of each witness, Brammertz said he could discount most of the testimony from all three. Maybe 20 percent of Siddiq’s testimony was based on fact, Brammertz suggested, but
his credibility as a witness is so low that none of his testimony would stand up in court. He described Hussam also as an unreliable witness, but suggested that he probably does have important information.”
Brammertz also apparently ruled out all of the Syrian government’s involvement in the crime – a startling confession given the relatively early stage of the investigations of the UNIIIC.
“Syria has five different state security apparatuses. I can’t imagine that an order came down from the president and worked its way through all the security services and until they killed Hariri,” Brammertz is quoted as saying. “If anything, you probably had one security service involved, and the order came from on high and, how high, we’ll have to figure out.”
In a separate cable detailing the arguments of Jamil as-Sayyed’s lawyer, the US Embassy advised: “
That Brammertz is worried about [Lebanon’s] continued ability to detain the four generals is cause for us to worry as well.”
The cable continued: “
Besides having a seismic effect on the political situation here, Sayyed’s release might well have security implications for us as a diplomatic missions. If Sayyed gets out, he is going to be angry and seeking payback, and he is going to see the United States as at least partly responsible for his interrogation by the UNIIIC and his long months in detention.”
Sayyed’s lawyer is said to have submitted a formal complaint to UN investigations, saying that interrogation techniques used by former UNIIIC Chief Investigator Gerhard Lehmann “violate[d] international legal norms.”
A May 2006 meeting with UNIIIC Acting Chief of Investigations Peter Nicholson allegedly raised the issue of US spy images of Lebanon. A cable about discussions with Nicholson supposedly sheds light on the level of US involvement in UNIIIC investigations.
“Nicholson also said he is still interested in seeing overhead imagery of Beirut, Anjar, and the Zabadani base in Syria. The UNIIIC is interested more broadly in Syrian patterns of activity in Beirut, Anjar and Zabadani, and would like to see if the [US] has any more surveillance that could be made available for this purpose.
“
Ideally, [Nicholson] would like to see as many as 12 overhead shots of Beirut from January 1 to February 20, 2005. He also said he would like to see any available satellite imagery taken over Anjar and Zabadani between July 1, 2004, and December 31, 2005,” one cable said.
“He realized the difficulty of these requests, given the classification levels of satellite imagery, but he would be happy with anything the [US] could provide. Regardless of the date of the imagery – the [US] could even ‘pick a date’ – it could be of use to the UNIIIC, regardless of whether any sign of a white Mitsubishi van turned up. Specifically, the imagery could help the UNIIIC corroborate certain witness accounts. Particularly in the case of Anjar, the UNIIIC was interested in signs of ‘vehicles stored for operations’ Nicholson said.”
Although no comment is made in the cables by Feltman on Brammertz’s request,
the frequent mention of US intelligence operations in Lebanon is likely to further fuel debate over the impartiality of the UN investigations into Hariri’s death, as well as cast aspersions on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) – a court long subjected to allegations of politicization.
In the same meeting, Nicholson reportedly informed Feltman that
data from the crime scene was being sent to the United States’ FBI.
“Nicholson provided emboffs [embassy officials] with DNA profiles of suspected Hariri bomber Ahmad Abu Adass and Adass’ family members, as well as DNA analysis of an unidentified “John Doe” found at the February 14 blast site, [officials have] sent these profiles back to FBI headquarters for further analysis,” the cable said.
The cables suggest that Brammertz and his team, in spite of repeated setbacks, had been progressing well with investigations. A recent report by Canadian broadcaster CBC alleged that UNIIIC workers had been disorganized, even incompetent, in their early operations. It reported that information obtained on phone records had been ignored by the UNIIIC until late 2007 –
a claim which information in the leaked diplomatic documents refutes.
“[Brammertz] said that the UNIIIC has collected hundreds of phone numbers from the calling records of six Tripoli cell phones associated with the February 14, 2005, assassination of Hariri,” one cable said.
“He also said that the UNIIIC is conducting interviews with members of the ‘Naba cell,’ Sunni militants detained by the ISF (Internal Security Forces) in May. Brammertz said that the detained suspects still have not been formally charged by Lebanese authorities. As a result, they have had no contact with defense attorneys.”
Discussions turned to the 14 other assassinations the UNIIIC was tasked with probing and Brammertz divulged that just three investigators were dealing with those cases.
“Nonetheless, Brammertz said it was obvious, from an analytical if not purely material perspective, that the 14 bombings are linked to the Hariri assassination
**. ‘You have enough links,’ Brammertz explained, ‘same modus operandi, same explosives, similar targets.’ Phone numbers that had turned up in the Hariri investigation had turned up in some of the 14 other cases as well. Piles of cigarettes found at the scenes of some of the bombings might provide a link as well, he said,” a cable from the meeting said.
At the end of the meeting, Brammertz is said to have outlined to UN officials UNIIIC’s plan to offer suspected conspirators plea bargains in exchange for conclusive information on Hariri’s killing.
“In his view, the best chance to close the case and bring it to a prosecutable level would be to ‘turn’ a person or persons who could provide or describe the link between those responsible and the crime,” the cable said. “Brammertz’s investigators have scheduled another 150-200 interviews over the next six months, and of these, approximately 30 are with individuals who may have the knowledge that could provide this critical linkage. The difficult part is to convince one or more of those involved to “make a deal” with the [UNIIIC].”
Feltman wrote that Brammertz had even advocated regime change in Lebanon in order to coax suspects into talking. “Brammertz continued that another development that could facilitate witnesses coming forward would be a change in the [Emile] Lahoud presidency,” the cable said.
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