Harirri Witness Missing

The brother of a Syrian witness in the inquiry into former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri's assassination accused France of involvement in his murder in comments published on Wednesday.

"The French authorities helped facilitate the disappearance of Mohammed Zuheir al-Saddiq with the aim of his being liquidated by another party or they liquidated him themselves," Imad al-Sadiq charged in a Syrian newspaper interview.

"My brother was under the protection of French authorities," he told the Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the Syrian government.

Saddiq, who lives in Damascus, accused "Lebanese parties", including Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, of having plotted "with the French to kill (my) brother".

"The assassins want the finger of blame to be pointed at Syria, on the basis that it was the only party to benefit from his disappearance."

Hezbollah also accused France of involvement in Saddiq's disappearance.

"Is France in possession of information capable of swaying the investigation and hiding it?," Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said in a statement sent to AFP.

He added that the affair "raised many questions about France".

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday that the witness, a former intelligence officer, had disappeared from his suburban home in the French capital.

"But I do not know under what conditions and if there was a police presence to watch him," he said.

Saddiq, who was under an international arrest warrant requested by a Lebanese prosecutor, was detained in October 2005 in a Paris suburb in connection with the February 2005 assassination of Hariri.

France refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it had not been given guarantees that he would not face the death penalty if convicted.

Saddiq's family says it has had no contact with him for two months.

Newspaper reports in 2006 quoted him as saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his then Lebanese counterpart, Emile Lahoud, ordered Hariri's assassination in a massive Beirut car bombing.

A political crisis that has rattled the country since the murder is widely seen as an extension of the regional confrontation pitting the United States and its Saudi ally against Iran and Syria.

Source: AFP