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BEIRUT: A senior Free Patriotic Movement official recanted Tuesday earlier confessions that he collaborated with Israel, claiming before the Permanent Military Tribunal that he was forced to confess under torture.
“These [charges] were fabricated against me by the [Internal Security Forces] Information Branch for political reasons in order to accuse me … and to accuse the Free Patriotic Movement and [its leader] … Michel Aoun,” retired Gen. Fayez Karam told the court, headed by Brig. Nizar Khalil.
Speaking during his second trial session in the presence of his defense attorneys Rashad Salameh and Cinderella Merhej, Karam said he was forced to confess after he was beaten, tortured and threatened by Information Branch personnel.
He said he neither knew Israeli officials, nor collaborated with Israel or met any Israeli officer outside Lebanon.
“All these facts [accusations] were written by investigators in the investigation minutes which I was forced to sign,” Karam added.
Karam had earlier admitted to collaborating with Israel during preliminary investigations conducted by the Information Branch and repeated the same confessions before Riyad Abu Ghayda, the first military investigative judge and in the presence of his defense attorneys.
Asked why he repeated his confessions before Abu Ghayda, Karam said that he was afraid he would be returned to Information Branch custody and again be tortured if he withdrew his admission of guilt.
Karam, who was arrested by the Information Branch in August, is charged with collaborating with the Mossad and providing it with information about Lebanese parties, including Hezbollah and the FPM, in return for money.
His arrest came as part of a nationwide crackdown on collaborators with Israel carried out by authorities.
But Karam confirmed that he had traveled from Lebanon to France via Israel in 1992.
“After I was released from Syrian prisons in 1992, Lebanese security agencies fabricated charges based on which they issued an arrest warrant against me … I [sought a friend’s help] who transferred me to [the southern village of] Bkassin,” Karam said.
He added that after that, he went to the Israeli city of Haifa with the help of Elias Karam, an officer in the disbanded South Lebanon Army which fought alongside Israel before its forces withdrew from most of south Lebanon in May 2000.
“There [in Haifa], I was interrogated by two Israeli officers after which I spent one night [in the city] and I boarded a ship to Cyprus, from which I headed to France,” he explained.
Karam, who was a senior general under Aoun, a former army commander who fought a war against the Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1989, was arrested by the Syrian authorities in the early 1990s.
The retired general denied charges that he knew an Israeli officer called “Rafi” or an Israeli diplomat with whom he held regular meetings in Paris and denied that he informed them about his relationship with Hezbollah officials, including the party’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem and Zghorta MP Sulemian Franjieh.
Karam justified his ownership of a large number of “suspicious” French, German, Austrian and Belgian international telephone lines, claiming that he needed them to follow up on his business outside Lebanon.
Asked why he dialed a “suspicious” Israeli phone number, Karam said the number belonged to Joe Haddad, a Lebanese residing in Paris.
Concerning charges that he contacted two Israeli nationals, Karam denied they were Israelis, saying one was a foreign journalist and the other a British diplomat.
Karam also dismissed charges that he expressed to Aoun his intention to telephone Israeli officials and demand that Israel halts its summer 2006 war against Lebanon.
The court postponed the session to April 21 to have the opportunity to hear the testimony of witnesses and examine the list of international calls that Karam had made.
The session was attended by a number of FPM lawmakers and supporters along with Karam’s relatives.
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