Russia reiterates support for international tribunal

by **Admin** Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:48 am

Russian
Ambassador to Lebanon Sergei Boukine reiterated on Friday Moscow's
support for the international tribunal that would try suspects in the
2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and related
crimes. Pukin told reporters the ongoing investigation into the 2005
assassination of Hariri "should be accomplished and the culprits, be
they individuals or sides, should be punished."

"We
adhere to this stand and we would support the tribunal that shouldn't
be politicized. We, as permanent members of the UN Security Council,
follow up closely the ongoing investigation into the crime," he added.
The ambassador also stressed that his country rejected "political assassinations."

Pukin
made the remarks to reporters during a visit to Progressive Socialist
party leader Walid jumblatt at the latter's ancestral palace in the
Chouf town of Mukhtara.

Last week, Russia pledged to contribute $ 500, 000 to the international tribunal.

In
other developments, German Prosecutor and former head of the
International probe committee into the Hariri assassination Detlev
Mehlis described as "nonsense" allegations made by detained former head
of the General Security Jamil al-Sayyed in a letter sent to UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Mehlis' remarks were published by the
Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat on Friday.

In
his letter to Ban, Sayyed said that Mehlis had asked him to tell the
Syrian government to find a Syrian to confess to the killing of Hariri.

Sayyed
said that three months prior to his arrest an investigator from the UN
commission had asked him to transmit a message to Syrian President
Bashar Assad "which was meant to persuade him to present to the
commission a Syrian victim of a certain caliber, who would confess to
the crime and would eventually be found dead." This would allow for an
agreement with Syria similar to the one reached with Libya in the
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, he said.

A
Libyan intelligence agent and a Libyan airline official were tried for
the bombing and the intelligence agent was convicted, though a Scottish
judicial commission said last June that new evidence indicates that a
miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

Sayyed
said he told the UN investigator that he could not transmit such a
message unless he was provided evidence "pointing in the direction of a
Syrian involvement in the crime, otherwise the Syrians would think that
he was leading them into a trap."

The
general said the investigator replied that the UN commission did not
have such evidence and insisted that if Sayyed did not transmit the
message for a Syrian to admit to the crime he himself would be blamed
for the assassination.

On
Thursday, key Syrian witness in the probe into former Hariri's
assassination said he was in hiding in Europe as his family demanded
answers from France about his fate.

Mohammed
Zuheir al-Siddiq's whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery since he
disappeared about a month ago from his suburban Paris home, and
relatives in Syria say that they have been without news for two months.

"I
am living in a secret hideout, close to France and the international
tribunal, and I am well," told Kuwait's As-Siyassah newspaper quoted
Siddiq as saying by telephone.